BJ Craft Anthem

I took the decision to buy the aircraft in September 2022 and placed an order with Bondaero who are the UK agents for B J Craft. Due to the Corona Virus lockdowns in China this order didn’t appear until mid-February 2023! Chris Bond, handed over a large quite heavy box with the Anthem inside it. The whole lot was extremely well packaged with the fuselage supported by an attachment that ran through the wing tube and was bolted to the sides of the box. This serves to prevent the box being squeezed and the contents damaged. The Anthem went together surprisingly easily with no real problems surfacing throughout. I did use Gators battery tray and incidence adjusters as well as the tail wheels and main wheel axles that Bondaero stock. Once everything was fixed in place, a final fingertip CG check showed that I had indeed hit the 300 mm mark (BJ used that) so it was onto the final phase of setting up the controls. In the early flights, apart from looking to adjust all the usual features I have been quite taken with how well the Anthem and TMCR/D3 combination has delivered an excellent flying machine. The only issue is that you need quite a lot of in-spin aileron to make the aircraft spin. Spin recovery is very quick. Oh, final flying weight with mid-weight packs, was 5008 g so it makes weight. With the increase in 2024 to 5,500 g take-off weight, you will be able to use bigger packs while still making weight easily.