The advent of warmer weather, combined with access to the lake being restricted, meant that it had been a long time since I'd flown the Trainstar floatplane and, feeling rather sorry for it hanging around in the study, I decided to take it off the floats and restore it to it's original undercarriage.
A simple process of removing four bolts and unplugging the added rudder servo had the floats off, and the the aluminium undercarriage strut was quickly back in place. Whereas on the floats the Trainstar looked rather diminutive, with the undercarriage it looks positively oversized, making me think I should get a pair of outsized wheels for it, bush-plane style.
At the field the next day, on a rather dull grey morning, the Trainstar was soon launched and into the air. For some reason the elevator needed a lot of up-trim, however this was soon sorted in flight although I brought it in just to check that nothing was awry. Satisfying myself that everything was OK, I gunned the motor and had the Trainstar straggling into the air, its left wing dipping towards the turf as ever.
The one change I made was to fix the tailwheel, and I found that this helped it to track straight on take-off, something I'd discovered similarly when I added the rudder servo which helped keep things on an even keel, literally, during takeoff with much better control than the cable system ever could.
Having the Trainstar now flying a bit more evenly, I was amazed at how difficult it is to fly. I think I've remarked before that it's quite engaging because of it's idiosyncrasies. It is, but also quite frustrating when you're just wanting to cruise something around the field without having to be on guard at every move.
This is especially evident after having been flying the Canadair which, also having the same wingspan, is completely easy to fly and as docile as you could wish, while still looking like a character plane and having capability for some aerobatics.
Nevertheless, it's good to have the Trainstar back in service, and I'm going to be working to get familiar with its characteristics again so that it's less baffling and more enjoyable to fly...
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