Handle line spacing? What BB said got me to thinking...

[Paul Taylor]

OK,
So someone explain this to me. I found something that Brett Buck wrote about setting the line spacing ...some to the effect of what feels right for you. It was a old word doc I found. Might have been a cut and paste from the web. I can not remember where it came from.

Do you put less line spacing because it is what everyone else is doing? Or do you set it to what feels best for you? Or do you adjust it to make the plane respond better?  Someone said it was like power steering in a car.
In a race car you do not want power steering, in a dump truck on the other hand you might want it.

Wider spacing = ?
Narrow spacing = ?

Do meet some place in the middle?
I am so confused, but then it does not take much. 

[Allan Perret]

OK,
So someone explain this to me. I found something that Brett Buck wrote about setting the line spacing ...some to the effect of what feels right for you. It was a old word doc I found. Might have been a cut and paste from the web. I can not remember where it came from.

Do you put less line spacing because it is what everyone else is doing? Or do you set it to what feels best for you?Yes Or do you adjust it to make the plane respond better?  Someone said it was like power steering in a car.
In a race car you do not want power steering, in a dump truck on the other hand you might want it.

Wider spacing =  more sensitive, faster control response..
Narrow spacing =  less sensitive, slower control response..

Do meet some place in the middle?
I am so confused, but then it does not take much. 

[Dan McEntee]

   Yeah, line spacing helps you set the speed and response of the controls. Works in concert with the horn lengths on the flaps and elevators. You can even set the up or down individually if you have a model that turns faster one way or the other. Very handy to have a handle that will let you adjust it in this way. Everybody is different, and has different reaction times and comfort zones, so that is why you need to set it up for what feels good and comfortable for you.
   And it is kind of like power steering in a way. And I don't think there are too many race cars on any kind of track that don't have power steering. Maybe top level drag racers don't, don't know for sure, but midgets, sprint cars, Indy cars, NASCAR stock cars, Formula One, just about everything has power steering. In the old days, I have read where drivers would swap around steering wheels of larger or smaller diameter to help there feel of the car, and I imagine todays drivers have that option also. It's all about leverage and feed back from the car to the driver, or from the model down the lines to the pilot.
    Experiment a little on a nice day with a spare airplane if you don't want to use your nicest model, and you'll see what I mean.
  Good luck and have fun,
  Dan McEntee

[Mark Scarborough]

My game plan is to make all my planes feel as close in response as possible . In other words, I find a plane that responds the way I want it to,, ( fast or slow controls) then I try to make all my other planes respond to the same amount of handle input so that my control input through each manuever is more based on muscle memory than visual stimulus. Imagine your plane flying at the ground at 60 mph and having to make a totally visual based response and to remember how much THIS airplane takes to turn that 90 degree corner. 

[Steve Helmick]

What some folks seem to misunderstand is that you can build the plane with slow controls, and use a wide spacing at the handle, to speed it up. This is fine. If you build the plane with fast controls and end up with under 3" or so spacing at the handle, you lose a lot of accuracy. This isn't what you want! It also makes it relatively easy to get the plane 'on one line', and this is definitely not what you want.

That profile that I posted pics of...the Fancherized Twister...blue & white...changed response radically when I reduced the elevator travel to flap travel. The plane is too heavy, so needs more flaps, or bigger flaps.

I'm trying to widen the handle spacing on that puppy, to fix my own tuneup. It's not as easy to do.  I flew it at 2.5" spacing awhile, then 3", and now I'm out to about 3.3" and having trouble again. More stick time will fix it, eventually.  Steve