Holy cow, she flew and she flew like a dream!!! I have bee up for 36 hours straight, but before I go to bed I want to take a minute and thank all of the great people who helped make this happen today. Dave and Brent (the guys who created this plane idea and design)drove up from Utah ( 3 hours) and worked most of the night and all day today with me to get her done. Jeremy has been at the shop the last 4 nights working with and helping me. These sure are some good friends! Our time line was tight but we pulled it off and flew her at dusk with an amazing sunset to greet her for her first time in the air, it was perfect! I also want to say a special thanks to my wife for supporting me and for her advice and input on this plane. She has helped me with all my planes and this one is no exception. Some pictures, video and more specific info will be posted soon. For now, good night.

It was a long fun and tiring weekend. The smell of CA glue, hot covering and soldering smoke brought it all together. That and Joe skipped the sleeping part of saturday night all together. lol what a maniac. She flew!, it was short and sweet and from the looks of things with some Fine tuning and a bit of engine tuning. This will be a Very good flying aircraft.

Here is an unedited clip from the maiden Sorry for all the chatter, I'll update the link when I get my video editing software up to speed.

Joe's 133" extra 260 Maiden Flight Hitec, DLE222 (2 min 46 sec)

and the weigh in after the flight, and after de-fueling.

Joes DLE222 powered extra 260 just after maiden - weigh in. (0 min 52 sec)

NICE

Congrats on the maiden! Awesome work on this. C

congratulations, enjoyed the thread.

Looks sweet Joe

I took a trip to Joes place yesterday to get a closer look at this monster up close ,The pics do not do it justice the workmanship and effort to make this come together is nothing less than astounding. I left around noon and didn't think there was any way that the plane would have flown sunday especially when Joe was up all night working hard to get this bird finished.
Congrats Joe on the maiden it looks like it's a keeper from the short video, I can't wait to see the finished product.

Congrats on the build and maiden. Hope to see you in St. George.

Doug

hey Joe that was a weekend we wont soon forget lol, it was a lot of work and a lot of fun, funny how a 3minute flight makes 3 years of work worth it. cant wait to get to saint george and get some tune and set up on that bird. Nichole a big thank u for feeding us and keeping everyone somewhat sane this weekend.

Originally Posted by flyrcjoe13

Over this last weekend I was excited to see that if I stayed on task this week I would be able to see this bird fly over the next weekend. So I got on the ball and call in an order of SWB 2" arms, fuel tubing and carbon fiber tubes to make my rudder linkage. I called this order in to Chief Aircraft on Tuesday which meant I should see my package Thursday. After the package did not arrive today (Friday) I called them to see where it was. I was then told that because of a dispute that accured a year ago, they would no longer accept orders from me. My big question was, why then was I able to place the order on Tuesday and not be told about this then? Also, why had no else called me to let me know by now? This is some of the same things that happened in the dispute. The dispute was over an 85 cc Raven from EG (not a small purchase for me) that was damaged and defective straight out of the box. There were many issues including: the add stated it came with a carbon fiber spinner and I received an aluminum spinner painted black with scratches, a damaged cowling, the wing tube socket was put in incorrectly making it so the wing tube would not go in, the fuselage stingers in the bottom where broken, where the turtle deck and the rudder met was bulged, the hinges on the elevators and ailerons where so misaligned that you could not move them to full deflection, and the bevels were so bad that it looked like a 4 year old had cut them. I my mind this was a lot of things wrong for a $699.00 item. I was told that it was made by EG in Germany and would be high quality, it was not. I put forth a big effort to work this out with Chief directly at first. When Dana the owner, became completely ignorant and uncooperative I had to take it to my bank to mediate the issue. His version of fixing the problem for me was to have me ship it back to him at a cost of $300 and then he would review it to see what he would do from there. He would not budge from this resolution even when I offered for him to just send me a new cowling and the correct spinner. Like I said ignorant and uncooperative. So in the end through bank mediation I paid the shipping to send back just the cowling and the spinner and Dana then sent me a new cowling and the correct spinner. This resolution is what I thought was a win for me and a bigger win for Dana because I still had to make all of the repairs to the plane. I enjoyed working with Steve at Chief because he really knows his products. I used to call and ask for him because I knew I would get all my questions answered and get the product I needed. I am not a person to air my grievances out in the cyber world. I like to leave issues in the past and move forward. Unfortunately Dana does not have that same view and I am going to tell everyone how he chooses to deal with customers and conduct his business. At this point my frustration level and disappointment is through the roof. I do not think there is anything Dana could do to rectify this. Even if he sent me his largest most expensive rc airplane for free I would not accept it.

So I am going to everything I can to find the part locally and stick with my goal of flying it this weekend. Cross your fingers!

Funny story John.

HELL YA !!!!!!!!

Nice!!!!

Awesome Joe!!!!

Added some pics..

https://www.flyinggiants.com/forums/...&postcount=104

https://www.flyinggiants.com/forums/...&postcount=105