Brett, is there a good reference where I could read and benefit from the energy management topic/discussion you reference? Would love (and need to) to learn!
Thanks
Not really, its a flying skill that you just need to learn. It's about how gentle you need to be on the handle in certain parts of the pattern. For example - with a ARF Nobler and a OS-30s, if you start out the maneuver trying to do "max" corners, the first inside might be great, but you have lost so much speed by that point that the rest of the maneuver sort of falls apart, going slower and slower. and more and more ragged. And expert pilot will be able to predict or feel it and will more-or-less automatically back off, usually by limiting the control pressure to feather in and feather out the control force to minimize the speed loss, to keep that from happening. The really good pilots are feeling it on a second-to-second basis and continually adjusting, making the best of what they happen to have at that instant.
It's also a critical element in flying in the wind, and if you know what to look for, you can anticipate people getting blown out of their hourglass 5 seconds before it happens
With a "classic" setup like a 30S with, presumably, a 9-6, once you let it get slowed down, it will not recover. You can see the problem even on takeoff. You release the airplane, and then listen to the engine and feel the controls. That combination will take about a lap and a half to two full laps to reach the final speed and the engine to settle into its level flight "setting". Compare that to say, an competent tuned pipe or electric with a simple governor - it will blast out of there like you fired a JATO bottle on the back of it. You can also feel it as a launcher, it will take one finger to hold on to your proposed system, and you are holding on for dear life with, say, a PA51.
Same thing happens in the maneuvers, the recovery time for a "classic" setup is VASTLY longer than for a more modern system. So, flying one of those type airplane will teach, or demand, that you learn to be able to sense the thing slowing down and be able to adjust your aggressiveness in the middle of a maneuver, or have enough experience to anticipate it and don't cause a problem in the first place.
Typically, telling someone, particularly a low-time pilot, what to do or to "back off" is pointless because they can only do the maneuvers one way at best, the way their reflexes have taught them to do it. They have no real control over it. This is more-or-less true into the expert ranks, to a decreasing degree.
Note that this is why "classic" systems are no longer competitive, and also why so many people can't see why that is true. Modern systems take far less "fudging" to manage the energy, and you can make a pretty big mistake and it will recover fairly quickly. A Skyray 35 with a Fox, it takes extreme skill to get through a full pattern in any sort of wind, the very same Skyray 35 with a 20FP, you can be much less skilled, hammer it everywhere, and it will keep going. Many people do not really understand why you would need to put a pipe PA75 in a 630 square inch airplane, it would "fly fine" with an ST46.
This is all part of the craft of learning to fly. So get out, fly airplanes, get advice from the better pilots - like your experienced expert flying buddy or his even more experienced world and national champion buddies - and get stick time. I think the ideas above, while they may make sense to you, may be nearly impossible to actually implement at your current skill level. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, learning anything is a progression from simple ideas and for stunt, just doing the maneuvers without crashing, to learning to trim, to learning to deal with the wind.
Brett