Hello,
I have recently noticed a difference in the way in which my wrist, forearm and arm work in the outside squares corners and in the inside squares corners.
In the outside squares corners, the wrist makes the necessary movements easily and these movements are fast enough for the corners to look very sharp.
In the inside squares corners, I cannot jerk the handle using my wrist joint only fast enough for the corners to look sharp. To make them as sharp as the outside squares corners, I have to involve my forearm and arm.
To involve my forearm and arm, I have to bend the entire arm in the elbow joint and then rotate the wrist as fast as I can.
Consequently, somebody watching me flying the pattern sees a lot of arm waving and bending what, I believe, is rather not recommended.
Thank you,
M
That very strongly suggests that you control response is too slow, and maybe that the forces are too heavy. Since it's asymmetrical, also, that you are holding your elbow too straight. If you set your handle perpendicular to the lines at neutral (highly recommended), you need to have your elbow bent about 60-90 degrees to get symmetrical wrist movement. If you hold your arm straight like you are shooting a target pistol then your wrist will want to move much further "down" than "up", which is where the crooked/"relaxed" handle position came from. In fact, that's how I adjust to unfamilar/slightly off neutral settings, if it is tilted "forward", I change my elbow a bit. It only works on a limited range, because too straight, and I start getting the sort of effects you have.
Note that in the proper position, you can use rotation of your forearm to increase the travel with no ill effects, without having to wave it up and down. When I do it, I can move the handle almost 90 degrees in either direction, and neutral is neutral/vertical.
Just as an example on the topic of control speed, not as a "recommended value" (since I can't tell what else you are doing), when I move by leadouts hard over, it's 4" from the "up" to the "down" line, and that gives me 31.8 degrees of elevator motion. The corresponding handle spacing is about 3 5/8" (which I vary around +-1/16" depending on the feel and maybe +1/8" at 2000 foot density altitude. But I do not know what CG you are running, or much about your airplane.
I said it before, its the same thing I suggested for Motorman for a different reason, but this is the sort of thing that will probably take *other people's assistance*. In this case, you need to get yourself with a very experienced competition modeler, who knows why you can't be waving your elbow around to succeed, to help you sort out things you are doing from things the airplane is doing.
In recent years, your problem has become very common, because airplanes are published with much slower controls shown on the plans than they used to be, with the assumption that the CG will be correspondingly further aft. People build it the way it shows, but want their airplane to "track", and then follow the "How I was a star in 1958!" trim instructions about how you should stack nose weight in there for any trim problem. So it ends up with slow controls and forward CG, and you can't move the controls enough to get it to turn without waving your entire arm up and down.
The last clinic I did, both David and I were complaining about our arms being worn out by the end of the day, because we flew airplane after airplane that had massive control forces and far too slow, we literally spent almost all day taking out noseweight and/or modifying handle spacing to speed them up to the low end of competitive range. You would think the pilots would have a problem with that, and they did, for the first couple of flights. Then, all of the sudden, arm-waving went away, hops out of corners went away, and all the bending/crouching/jumping/"Ole'!" arm motions went away, they cleaned up, and they picked up huge points.
But if you are out in a parking lot trying to figure it out yourself, then you have nearly no chance, because while I can spew 5000 words describing the issue, it will be almost impossible to translate that into your "reference" and you still have next to no idea what I am talking about. It's easy with engines (or at least, modern engines) because it really is just a matter of copying the setup and following the directions, but it's very difficult with control feel issue. Most pilots are *severely crippled* because of their trim and control setup, and they generally have *no idea* that anything is wrong, and that the solution is to practice more. Without some external input or reference to follow, you can't get out of it.
Brett
Topic: Pattern technique (Read 1165 times)
