I am not comforable flying them yet. I have crashed my GP SE5a umteen times but I hope I am getting better. I like my Eflite planes but I can fly my GP SE5a when the wind grounds my Eflite planes.

My experience is the the D7 and SE5, are both exceptional planes , and can handle much more wind than you would expect ! The D7 does better touch and goes I think do to it settling better in ground effect, however the SE5 flies so floaty and yet underpower flies clean, it is just an amazing little plane, I can't remember if I posted this before on this thread? but everytime I see these planes I like to let everyone know how good they are.

I took the GP Fokker DVII for a test crash and it passed with flying colors. I now have to repair the lower wing because of the crash. The brittle cowl is in many pieces. I am hoping I found all the pieces and can glue it back together. Then I will fill it with epoxy puddy and use it as a mold to vacuum form new ones.

[QUOTE=degreen60;860095]I took the GP Fokker DVII for a test crash and it passed with flying colors.

A sense of humor always lessens the pain..lol:)

My cowl was like a jigsaw puzzle in the end held together with red tape. The latest crash (Fokker vs lamp-post) finished it. Had to strip covering from both wings and rebuild them....all done now what wow, back from the dead really.

I am going to try making a cowl from aluminium, a drink can. So it can crumple but be beaten out again.

The cowl is not repairable. There are too many little bitty pieces missing. I think I have enough taped together to copy the shape to make a cowl. I did another crash test tonight. This time the plane flunked but the pilot passed. The plane was a little hard to control. I wanted to land and add ail to rud mix. I landed downwind too hard. Back in the repair shop. I did learn something on this flight. If you fly without the cowl the top hatch magnets are too weak to hold the hatch on.

Thanks for that dg60, I have mine all charged up ready for a flight - without the cowl, will sort one out first or tape it down.

DeGreen I can't wait till your flight reports start comeing in for the Electrifly Spad XIII [popcorn]

The Spad was always white knuckle time for me :eek:

I have one new in the box. Marty

The GP planes are white knuckle time for me too. At least now the SE5A is only white knuckle at take off and landings. Rest of the time is fast heart beat time. I am hoping to get better at flying them. Flew the SE5A today then to calm down flew the Hans Grade and the MS-N. What a differance, from fast and don't look away to slow and if I look away I know where it will be when I look back.

Sounds like you had some good flight time!! I can only wish...
The winds here are too much for my birds! Might get to launch some bigger ones later!:D Hos the HG flying?

The Hans Grade is a slowfliers dream. It can be flown in some wind. If no wind it lands and rolls just a few inches on grass and does not nose over. If slight breeze can be landed without moving, just hover it in. I think Hobby Lobby sold this and a Beloit that is about the same plane with differant wing and tail shape. If you like slowflyers and can find one, grab it. It is easy to change the fuselage stick to a CF arrow shaft. Weather here has been nice and getting better.

Great! Happy flying my friend!:D

Anyone know how long flight leader pennets should be? I made some to app scale of 5 feet. Should they be longer?

When I was in Germany I saw "Streamers" on the wing struts, they were "black and white checked" on the leader. Unless they were flying solo, then they came off. I also read "red" streamers (british and french) were on pilots planes who were still in training or very new pilots. I don't think there was a standard length for streamers. Pennents were painted on the fuse close to the pilots. Streamers I saw on German Albatros were about 4 feet. I also saw streamers on the rudder! Very interesting! I think I would have kept the streamers under my seat! Not sure I wanted everyone..especially a rookie pilot to come and get me...because I got streamers saying.."Iam the leader" Owell....still a very interesting part of aviation history!:)

Just to show variation: heres Fritz Kempf..those are some long Streamers!

I watched one of the old movies made in the 30s about WW1. They did show the streamers being taken off the leaders plane when he went up by himself. It looked like the streamer had a block at the front that was held to the center of outer strut with a pin. Don't remember how long the streamer looked to be. The movie also had streamer attached to the top of the pilots helment which is probably just hollywood. I read that finally they no longer flew with streamers cause the emeny was concentrating thier attack on the plane with the streamers. My SE5A is AEF plane and flight colors are blue, so I put blue streamers on made of very soft cloth. You can see them fluttering on fly bys.

Cool!! When I saw the Albatros (replica) flying, I thought for sure I would hear those streamers smacking in the breeze...funny thing was, they made no noise at all! But they sure did look cool!

I took the GP Fokker DVII out for another crash test tonight and it thumbed its nose at me. Flew nice, I found much easier to control at low throtle setting. But I ended up fooling the plane, I bend the landing gear struts when I landed. I am going to try moving the balance point forward of where GP shows it should be to see if I can tame the planes just a little.

If you do show us how you did it. I want to try making one too. Right now I am thinking of just glueing foam blocks together and sanding into shape then glue on plane.

Speaking of Cowlings, If you have a dollar general store or something close to that, they carry alot of plastic bowls and containers, they come darn close to alot of cowlings. Some just need small mods.

Another thing for round cowls is bottom of plastic containers. I now have a bottom of a Clorox disinfecting wipes container as the cowl on my Wattage Camel. I usually start my scratch builds my finding something to use as the cowl and build the plane to fit. On a couple of my planes I made printed paper cowls by enlargeing the cowl of paper airplane to fit. They are easy to make and easy to replace if you crash. I been looking at paper for the Fokker DVII but haven't found a paper cowl that I like. I may make to top part of the cowl from foam and use paper for the rest.

do you use card stock? thicker paper?

I use plain paper to start with. I use masking tape to put the cowl together. If the cowl seems too flimsy I make another one using photo paper. Here are some of my paper cowls. When they get beat up enough from flying I just make a new one. The red cowl needs to be stiffer so when I make another one I will use photo paper.

I added 1.5 oz in front of the firewall of the GP Fokker DVII. Took it out for a crash test and boy did it flunk the test. It flys great. I got all the controls in trim and it will fly straight and level till wind changes it. It lands a little fast but still made a nice soft touchdown followed by forward flip in the grass with no damage. I am going to add weight to the nose of the SE5A and see how it flys.