Has anyone out there built Ted's Excitation?Have the plans and article, Aaron likes the looks of it so I am asking for reviews if anyone has one.  The original was a ST .46 plane, if built we would use a ST G.51 from Randy or the late Tom Lay.  Will definitely have foam wing and tail.

Any thoughts??

Thanks!
BIG Bear
RNMM/AMM

There was a thread at Stuka about using the Imitation wing and using a different location to compensate. Per Mr Fancher;


The basic changes aren't rokit sienz as we are wont to say from time to time. The Imitation was designed to more
or less mirror the earlier Excitation but with a simplified (and improved) wing. While the Excitation was a very
good flying airplane it was much more difficult to trim to fly well in all conditions than was the Imi... We came to
believe (and still do) that one of the big reasons was the swept forward hinge line. With an airplane tethered and
flying in circles (and therefore "yawed" to the right of its track through the air) there is some difference between
the airflow between the inboard and outboard wings. When the flaps are swept forward the differences are
exacerbated by the increased difference at which the wing strikes the air with respect to the flap. If you start flying
in winds the problem is even more pronounced from one side of the circle to the other.
The Imitation was, therefore, designed with a straight hinge line and with less overall taper to the wing (the tip of
the EXCI is 70% of the root and on the IMI it's 75%) This was done to minimize the need to change the location
of the wing in the fuse. When the majority of the wing taper (IMI) is in the leading edge the Mean Aerodynamic
Chord is further "AFT" (See comment at end re editing) that on a wing that is more or less equally tapered on the
leading and trailing edges. By reducing the overall taper of the IMI wing that "AFTWARD" movement is reduced.
THIS IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE: The longitudinal (fore and aft) location of the Mean Aerodynamic Chord "IS" the
wing aerodynamically speaking. Pretty much any performance calculation with respect to the CG, for instance, is
always determined and spoken of as a percentage of the MAC (from Bumblebees to 747s). Thus, when a
"designer" wants to locate a wing in the fuselage he needs to determine that location with respect to where the
MAC of the wing will end up.
Thus (again), when the IMI and EXCI wings are swapped the (mostly) single tapered IMI wing has to be located
"slightly" forward of where the double tapered EXCI wing would be. A "WAG" would be somewhere between 1/2
and 3/4 inches. I don't have the plans in front of me to give you a better number. Again, it's not brain surgery so
if you opted for 5/8" you're going to be within the noise range. The other big reason for locating the wing properly
is to get the big weight objects (engine, tank, pipes, etc) in the right places to avoid having to add a lot of nose or
tail weight.
I don't know if you've got the articles for the two airplanes 'cause there's a lot of discussion of the aerodynamic
thinking that went into them. Sounds really great. They even include a data sheet that Bill Fitzgerald (David's dad)
and I developed to allow us to design with a little more than a wet finger in the breeze to determine where to put
slot A and Tab B aerodynamically.
Trouble is, they were written back in the '70s and I've gotten somewhat smarter since then so... (By the way,
don't take that too literally. Both airplanes are excellent just as presented. They could,however, be trimmed so as
to make them better all around performers)
Here's a quick comment or two on things I would do different from a bench trimming standpoint (setting one up
before first flights).
Our biggest mistake back then was leaning to much on numbers we gleaned from measuring plans of successful
stunters that had been published up to that time. We took some things as gospel that really shouldn't have been
and it took a few years of additional development to arrive at what I feel is a much better way to set up stunters
for first flights.
Our biggest error was literally assuming that the nearly ubiquitous ~15% MAC location of the Center of Gravity on
those airpalnes was going to be a given for our airplanes. Guys in the east had been using CGs like that along with
big tails and flying gangbuster corners. I bought into that and designed the IMI and EXCI with big tails and 15%
CGs.
Don't do dat!
Both these airplanes have tails that are about 22.5% of the wing area which will allow the CG to be located much
further aft and still be very stable. An additional advantage is that when flying in winds the controls will not load
up as the Gs increase during wind driven wind ups, etc. You'll find the airplanes not much harder to fly well in
strong winds than in ideal air. They will respond very similarly in either case. That's not true with forward CG
locations.
If I was going to build one of these things today I'd locate the CG at 22-23% of the MAC (should'a mentioned this
earlier...for practical purposes with moderately tapered wings common to stunt ships you can use the average
chord--halfway out the wing on each side for making these measurements. There just isn't enough difference
between the "legitimate" MAC and the "average" chord to make it worth the effort...especially since you might
refine the actual location based on test flights in any case.)

Well, Bill, the Excitation is certainly a blast to fly. One of the reasons my new ship looks like the Excitation is, I thought it was one of Ted's prettier designs.