Just a guess, Sparky, but I imagine the lack of response reflects the general feeling of the stateside F2B competitors that the only thing really different from AMA CLPA (other than the political give and take) is the seven minute time limit. Most of the guys that compete at the US Team Trials generally equip all of their airplanes so that the flame out between 6:25 and 6:40 or so and that's about it.
There has been a lot of gossip over the years of designing/trimming differently for FAI because of the K factor rewarding cornered maneuvers more highly. I just don't think that is the case. Most guys are already flying corners as precisely as they can to compete in AMA events, just to be competitive with the top guns. The fact is (IMHO) that the airplane isn't the limiting factor to precise cornering, it is the limits of the pilot to fly them repeatedly correctly. Ergo, a top drawer AMA ship is already pretty much set to go with F2B.
Again, in my opinion, David's fairly positive thrashing of the rest of the guys back in France wasn't the result of doing the cornered stuff better. His ship flies them as well as anybody's and David's skill kept him in that ball game. I believe what sets David apart from most all of the rest of us is absolutely superior round maneuvers, particularly the round eights in which changes in pitch are almost undetectable from beginning to end but, even more importantly, the fact that his figure eight intersections are the proverbial "touch tangent and go" nirvana the rest of us try to achieve but seldom do. David does this day in and day out better than anybody I've watched in a life time of doing this stuff.
Not to kick a dead horse, but a large part of the reason for that "touch and go" performance is the hard work he put's into trimming the airplane so that lift developed matches lift required that I've talked about in the past. Getting the "touch and go" intersection depends in large part on the aircraft CG tracking the desired flight path. Airplanes that are producing more lift than required to support themselves have an element of motion "into" the flight path that makes it nearly impossible to time the shift from inside to outside flight track (or vice versa) so that the airplane seems to simply point the nose in the opposite direction and go where its pointed.
Be that as it may, I expect the only area of discussion for F2B specifically will be "rules" related and will probably fit just as well into the regular Rules section. I know it's been sort of quiet of late but I'm sure it will predictably pick up the next time there's a bone to pick.
Ted
Topic: for our F2B guys (Read 858 times)
