An unexpected opportunity to go maiden my Chocofly JS3 Rapture came up today at the Eglisau airfield of the Zurich model aircraft club. A windy and bumpy northern breeze, but some nice thermals and especially some great towplanes and towplane pilots and assistance from Dani Aeberli from Chocofly. The maiden flight went well, but the plane was a bit nose-heavy and had too little down-elevator in crow. Moving the battery to the rear fixed the CG issue, and it’s now flying just as nice as my scratch-built one. It’ll still need some fine-tuning though – but the turbulent weather wasn’t conducive for that today. Dani insisted on trying a self-start, something I hadn’t counted on being possible, but it went amazingly well – even uphill on a grass piste.

Here is a “quick and dirty” video and some pictures. More to follow.