Rob, here are a few thoughts which have occurred
to me over the last few weeks flying. There's a lot of model flyers out there
who have a very vague grasp on the basic aerodynamics of flight. Take the
example of the bloke (names changed to protect the innocent) who lets his
plane get a bit far down wind and so shuts the throttle to stop it flying
away. THEN he complains that the ailerons aren't responding. Well
guess what fella, with no airflow over the wings THEY WON'T! Then
there was the guy who was surprised to see his model flick roll every time he
pulled hard up elevator at high speed. "It's stalling" I said, WRONG! You only stall when your wing's angle of attack
depending on wing section). If you heave on full up elevator (and the
elevator is powerful enough) you can pivot the model about it's pitch axis
without changing the direction of flight. Hey Presto! Instant stall! In this
case, one wing was stalling a fraction before the other and thus - Instant
Spin! In horizontal flight this translates to a flick roll. Proof of the
pudding was when I told him to pull up more gently, thus giving the model time
to change its direction of flight in response to the elevator movement. A nice
clean loop with no flick was the result. Incidentally, this model was
comprehensively destroyed the next week due to flutter caused by over
speeding. We've seen a lot of that over the past few weeks as well. Next topic
of discussion perhaps? Anyone wants to respond to this, I gladly answer them.
Roger.