Bellanca Champion Citabria Pro

[il falco]

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I finally finished my Winter project. Thursday was a little windy, but with a little help from Stan and Billy, I had a successful maiden flight and two more. I thought I would post some pictures and info that I found about it.

http://www.joeld.net/citabria/history.html

[disgruntled]

An outstanding lookin' plane there Chuck. With your growing hanger of good lookin' planes, the moniker of "president for life" is sounding better each day.

GOOD JOB CHUCK!

[Spit'nfire]

...for that nice looking plane, please ?

kit/arf?
manufacturer?
power?
first impressions?

thanks

-glenn

[il falco]

This is a Balsa USA kit. Building it was pretty straightforward. The kit was cheap, less than $150 if I remember correctly. the wood was all good quality. I struggled with the plastic parts. The cowl and wheel pants, which you haven't yet seen, come in two halves, needing to be glued together, reinforced with glass cloth, then painted. In the end the paint didn't match. I think it would improve if one used white primer undercoating, I used auto gray.

The cost went up when I bought spray paint: under coat, red, white, and clear (Honda uses clearcoat don't they?). And went up further when I bought the ultracote in red , 4 rolls, and white, 1 roll. I didn't mention the 4 bottles of CA glue that I used.

Power is provided by my trusty OS 91 4 stroke with a pump. Someone already suggested it would fly better with a 120.

The fun started with the first take off run. It just gathered speed and the parisole wing lifted it into the air. I only needed a little up elevator to get right. It handled the wind by crabbing itself into the oncoming wind.
Landing was the same, I kept power on because of the wind. Reduced power over the briar patch and it was like jumping out of a window with a parachute and floating to touchdown.

At this point, I need to give those big ailerons more throw, and get the engine running a little better, It needs all the power the 91 will give. I initially used a 15 x 6 prop because it looked right on the nose. The 14 x 6 gives more RPM (9,500) and more horsepower. Set up right, I'm confident the OS will go to the mat for me.

Thursday looks like a good day, so things going right, I may get to do a roll or a loop!

Thanks for your interest.

[ljasmann]

Really nice looking plane. Wish I had been there to see if fly, but I suspect that I will get the opportunity to see it one of these days.

Larry