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Author Topic: The Father of Modern Stunt  (Read 7643 times)

Online Paul Taylor

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The Father of Modern Stunt
« on: November 27, 2011, 06:57:19 PM »
Someone loaned me a tape that Bob Hunt did called "George Aldrich - The Father of Modern Stunt".
I watched it tonight and heard how George came up with the current pattern.

What he said and I am paraphrasing - he was not to happy that the description was added to do a 5ft corner in the square maneuvers. He said it should have read that the model should do a smooth transitions going 90 degrees. That makes more sense.

Has there been any talk about putting this in for a change?

Paul
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Offline Howard Rush

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2011, 07:37:47 PM »
That's funny.  A post from a few years ago got reissued with today's date.
 
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Offline Brett Buck

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2011, 07:54:43 PM »
Has there been any talk about putting this in for a change?

  The 5 foot radius spec. is gone.

    Brett

Online Paul Taylor

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2011, 08:28:51 PM »
  The 5 foot radius spec. is gone.

    Brett

I did a copy paste from PAMPA's site. This is for the inside square.

Consecutive inside square loops are judged correct when the model starts from normal flight level and flies a square course consisting of two (2) loops, each with four (4) inside turns of approximately 4.9 feet radius and straight sized segments with bottom segments at normal flight level and top segments as inverted level flight at 45 degrees elevation.
Paul
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Online Paul Taylor

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2011, 09:22:16 PM »
I agree with you Ty. From what I watch in the film makes me wonder if the wording in the description should be different then the 4.9 ft.
Paul
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Offline PJ Rowland

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2011, 09:37:18 PM »
Seems to me - the top guys aren't going for a "smooth transition"

More like "a violent abrupt 90' corner "

If anyone of interest saw Walker flying at the Nationals this year would agree - the most violent sharpest corners I've ever seen.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” - Bruce Lee.

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Offline Steve Helmick

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #6 on: November 27, 2011, 09:54:31 PM »
The current stunt laws say about the corners: "and all turns must be smooth, precise, and shall be of a tight radius."

PT, being an AMA member, should be able to look this stuff up on the AMA website easy enough. Also, it's a subject of discussion on the "Online Judging Clinic" forum, and I'm sure a search of the "Rules Forum" should turn up something.

I tend to agree with Ty about Bob Palmer being the Godfather of Stunt. I don't know for sure who designed the pollywog OTS Chief, but do know that Joe Wagner did the revised (Classic) version. I know Bob designed the Go-Devil, and that it was said to be the predecessor to the Chief, so I'm fairly sure that Bob designed the polywog Chief, at least until Hi Johnson revised it into the kit version. I've yet to see anybody offer plans for the real original Chief before it got polywogged, as has happened with the Smoothie, both T-Birds, and the Nobler.   H^^ Steve  

« Last Edit: November 27, 2011, 11:03:04 PM by Steve Helmick »
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Offline PJ Rowland

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #7 on: November 27, 2011, 10:50:39 PM »
Steve : HUH ?

I didnt start the thread, I was commenting that Top guys dont do "smooth transition"

Thats it... - I have a current copy of the AMA rules anyway .. Im not sure what you were referencing...
If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” - Bruce Lee.

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Offline Steve Helmick

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #8 on: November 27, 2011, 11:17:05 PM »
Ok, I changed my post from PJ to PT. Doesn't alter the fact that a little bit of looking at the rules someplace will fill in the blanks.

As I posted in the Judging Clinic forum, I was rather expecting a slightly larger radius on the corners, but it hasn't happened. No design (so far) can manage the 5' radius, so some people just flew the hardest corner they could. Others just fly 20' radius corners, I guess. When I see Paul's "hard" corner, I really can't see any radius.  I know that on video the radius will show up, and if I was flying the same corner, I could see the corner radius from the handle end. If you can do a small radius without any 'hop' after the corner, then you'll get more points from most judges...but not all.

The change was made because folks complained for decades that nobody could do a 5' radius, as was previously specified. Now, somebody is complaining because there is no corner radius specified. Somebody is always going to "beach", I guess.   H^^ Steve
"The United States has become a place where professional athletes and entertainers are mistaken for people of importance." - Robert Heinlein

In 1944 18-20 year old's stormed beaches, and parachuted behind enemy lines to almost certain death.  In 2015 18-20 year old's need safe zones so people don't hurt their feelings.

Offline Brett Buck

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #9 on: November 28, 2011, 12:23:40 AM »
I did a copy paste from PAMPA's site. This is for the inside square.

Consecutive inside square loops are judged correct when the model starts from normal flight level and flies a square course consisting of two (2) loops, each with four (4) inside turns of approximately 4.9 feet radius and straight sized segments with bottom segments at normal flight level and top segments as inverted level flight at 45 degrees elevation.

   That was obsolete as of the latest rule book. I know, I put in the change! There are also extensive discussions about it on Stunthangar.

    Brett

Offline john e. holliday

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #10 on: November 28, 2011, 05:51:03 AM »
Looks like someone needs to get the latest down load of the rules and start reading them again and again. VD~
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Online Paul Taylor

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #11 on: November 28, 2011, 07:09:25 AM »
Sorry guys,
I pulled that info from the PAMPA site, not AMA. http://www.control-line.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=34

I did a little looking under the rules section and it did not jump out at me.

I should have down loaded the current rules from AMA.

Doing that now.... HB~>
Paul
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Offline De Hill

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #12 on: November 28, 2011, 08:14:57 AM »
The 5 foot radius corner...

Around 1991 I went to visit Wild Bill Netzeband in San Diego. I videotaped WBN out in his garage where he had airplanes and engines left over from a lot of experiments thad he had performed. He had about five 1/2a airplanes that he had built for a 5 foot corner experiment. One of the airplanes would do a real 5 foot radius corner. He had drawn a 5 foot radius corner on a building and flown the 1/2a airplane near the building and flew a 90 degree corner which matched the corner drawn on the building.

Wild Bill said that larger airplanes would physically turn the five foot corner, but would skid for a slight distance before exiting the corner. In english that means the larger airplanes that he experimented with would not perform a five foot corner.

When Wild Bill moved from that address, he had limited room in the moving van, so he destroyed the 1/2a airplanes, and threw them away.
De Hill

Offline Brett Buck

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #13 on: November 28, 2011, 11:29:55 PM »

When Wild Bill moved from that address, he had limited room in the moving van, so he destroyed the 1/2a airplanes, and threw them away.

    Oh no! I had no idea that had happened. I would have come down and moved them for him myself!

   Bill was as close to a genius of the technical side of stunt (and many other events) as there has ever been. And he knew it well before the rest of us. I actually don't think he liked stunt *competition* very much because of the technical compromises you have to make to be competitive.

    One of the sadder moments I have witnessed in the event was the poor reception given to Bill in his last batch of articles for SN. A few twits wrote stuff like "I don't fly model airplanes to get a math lesson" or some such. And he stopped doing it.

     Brett

Offline Larry Cunningham

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #14 on: November 29, 2011, 07:09:01 AM »
It should have read "a radius of approximately 15 feet", which is reality for everything but those little stunters that Wild Bill designed and he and Bob Baron flew.

Next to the BOM, the 5 foot corner has also been a major time wasting bone of contention.

Bill Netzband was one of my heroes and I exchanged correspondence with him; all I can say is the jerks who objected to his "math" never had any idea what Bill gave us nor what a fine man he was.

L.

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Offline Brett Buck

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #15 on: November 29, 2011, 11:07:32 AM »
Bill Netzband was one of my heroes and I exchanged correspondence with him; all I can say is the jerks who objected to his "math" never had any idea what Bill gave us nor what a fine man he was.

     As an illustration of how well-respected Bill was, De Hill, Brett Buck, and Larry Cunningham (and almost everyone else) AGREEs on the topic. So it's either true, or a sign of the apocalypse.

     Brett

Offline Larry Fernandez

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #16 on: November 29, 2011, 11:53:01 AM »
     As an illustration of how well-respected Bill was, De Hill, Brett Buck, and Larry Cunningham (and almost everyone else) AGREEs on the topic. So it's either true, or a sign of the apocalypse.

     Brett

And 2012 is just around the corner.  Its the end of the world!!

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Offline Ted Fancher

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #17 on: November 29, 2011, 01:45:03 PM »
     As an illustration of how well-respected Bill was, De Hill, Brett Buck, and Larry Cunningham (and almost everyone else) AGREEs on the topic. So it's either true, or a sign of the apocalypse.

     Brett

Feel free to toss in Ted Fancher as well.  I practically memorized CL Aerodynamics made painless and wore out the nomographs which he drew up for the mathematically disadvantaged such as yours truly.  One of Bill's great gifts was the realization that the numbers might well turn off some and so he almost always discussed in writing the underlying effects so an intelligent reader could "qualify" the effects of various aero aspects even if he couldn't "quantify" them.  The wisdom in doing so has informed everything I've written on stunt aerodynamics (thankfully since, as Howard will attest, I'd be hard pressed to express the stuff quantitatively!).

Offline Brett Buck

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #18 on: November 29, 2011, 02:10:40 PM »
Feel free to toss in Ted Fancher as well.

   Actually, I now feel more comfortable that it's not a sign of impending doom -  because Bob Baron and Ted Fancher ALSO agreed on this topic, a long time ago.

    Brett

Offline Jim Thomerson

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #19 on: November 29, 2011, 02:49:32 PM »
The oldest info I have is the 1948 AMA pattern.  The first mention of 5' corner is in the description of the square loop.  I suppose someone uniformatized the corner descriptions with 5' and it slid by without too much concern.  I have the Netzband article of building a 1/2A to try to fly a 5' corner, with, without looking it up, the result of 15' corners. 

Offline Serge_Krauss

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #20 on: November 29, 2011, 03:27:28 PM »
Bill Netzband was one of my heroes and I exchanged correspondence with him; all I can say is the jerks who objected to his "math" never had any idea what Bill gave us nor what a fine man he was.

Count me in there too! Absolutely!

Bill was as interesting and generous a man as any I've met, and discussions with him were enlightening and fascinating. Unfortunately, for quite a few people who would rather advrtise their disdain for mathematics, it does no good at all to also include the qualitative insights highlighted by the math, because they'll just use one's article or post as a vehicle for derision, rather than actually try to understand and appreciate its basic ideas. Those who ignored or castigated Bill, just passed up a wea;lth of wisdom they could ahve had, because he did indeed write to be understood on more than one level. Bill is not the only one who has backed off from trying to educate or discover truths. A great example of how sometimes small minds deprive the rest of real insight and sometimes replace it with oft disproved nonsense. Still, when I presented Bill with an interesting, very unconventional original configuration I was exploring, he jumped right in with suggestions and analysis of his own, and we had a nice e-mail exchange just before his passing. He was a fascinating and original thinker, experimenter, and teacher.

In the spirit of Bill's endeavors, one might just have reworded the rules to say "as close to a 5' radius as possible." Rules should supply inspiration for high goals. IMHO they shouldn't say, "just do your normal best and don't try for better."

SK

Offline Howard Rush

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #21 on: November 29, 2011, 08:18:45 PM »
I have recently been thinking of updating Bill Netzeband's articles.  It would be kinda fun, and I'd learn some stuff, but I fear that: a) nobody would read them, b) having math in them, they'd be rejected as elitist, c) they would be rejected as contradicting in places the great Bill Netzeband, and d) they'd be rejected as contradicting other beloved experts in even more places. 

The main reason for updating Bill Netzeband's articles is that we all have computers more potent than anybody had 50 years ago. Little aps could replace the nomographs, and we can go into detail way beyond anything anybody would tackle in those days.  The world also has another half century of CL experience, much of it guided by what Bill wrote. 
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Offline Randy Cuberly

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #22 on: November 29, 2011, 09:26:21 PM »
Most folks is CL flying recognize Bill as a genius and give him credit for the many things he did over a lifetime to enrichen the technical side of Model Aviation.
The other side to Bill was that he was a very, very nice kind gentleman and modeler.  When I was a kid of 12-15 Bill lived in the midwest (Independence MO) and I lived only a few miles away in Kansas City MO.  Bill was a Mentor and friend and talked to and treated a dumb kid as an equal.  I decided to become an Engineer because of many talks with Bill, and to a large degree owe my success in that field to our conversations. 
I built many of his early designs and flew them in combat in the KC area.

I have collected copies of all his articles and have read and studied them many times.

Howard:  Updating the articles would be a very worthwhile task.  Please do it if you can find the time.

Randy Cuberly
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Offline Brett Buck

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #23 on: November 29, 2011, 10:17:31 PM »
I have recently been thinking of updating Bill Netzeband's articles.  It would be kinda fun, and I'd learn some stuff, but I fear that: a) nobody would read them, b) having math in them, they'd be rejected as elitist, c) they would be rejected as contradicting in places the great Bill Netzeband, and d) they'd be rejected as contradicting other beloved experts in even more places.  

    All of which are valid concerns. Given the wide range of experience levels, you also end up having to start from dead scratch in every discussion because if you don't, some won't have the necessary background or vocabulary to follow it, and you end up with all sorts of digressions to explain things. I have found that almost anyone interested can understand it if you provide enough background, but starting from nothing on even simple ideas ends up being tedious for you and the reader. Add that to the inability or unwillingness of a few to do even the most basic research before asking questions, you end up repeating the same topics over and over. I have asked Leonard Neumann to let me use the SSW FAQ to address topics like "Fox 35 break-in", "How do I tell how much tipweight to use?" and there are some sticky posts here that attempt the same thing, but almost any of this can be found with a simple search.

   Brett
« Last Edit: November 30, 2011, 09:18:23 AM by Brett Buck »

Offline jim ivey

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #24 on: November 30, 2011, 01:44:15 AM »
5 feet = 1.524 meters = 5 feet this not 4.9 ,been taking math lessons from bill morrel?    LL~ jim ivey

Offline Trostle

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #25 on: November 30, 2011, 02:04:45 AM »
5 feet = 1.524 meters = 5 feet this not 4.9 ,been taking math lessons from bill morrel?    LL~ jim ivey

Not that it makes any difference anymore since our AMA rulebook no longer specifies 5 foot corners anywhere in the pattern.  But, a number of years ago, (mid 70's?) the AMA rulebook for CLPA was changed to adopt the FAI maneuver descriptions.  At that time, the FAI pattern specified the corners to be 1.5 meters, so the convention was incorporated into the rulebook to show both the 1.5 meter specification as well as the English equivalent which is approximately 4.9 feet (to one decimal point).

Keith

Offline Dennis Moritz

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #26 on: November 30, 2011, 03:27:48 AM »
Modern stunt. Modern stunt?

Offline John Stiles

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #27 on: November 30, 2011, 07:18:00 AM »
Not that it makes any difference anymore since our AMA rulebook no longer specifies 5 foot corners anywhere in the pattern.  But, a number of years ago, (mid 70's?) the AMA rulebook for CLPA was changed to adopt the FAI maneuver descriptions.  At that time, the FAI pattern specified the corners to be 1.5 meters, so the convention was incorporated into the rulebook to show both the 1.5 meter specification as well as the English equivalent which is approximately 4.9 feet (to one decimal point).

Keith
Shades of the BOM thread.....oh gawd.....who's gonna drag out a 4.9 or even 5' caliper and do the in-flight measurement. Nitpicking if ya ask me! LL~ LL~ LL~
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Offline Joseph Lijoi

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #28 on: November 30, 2011, 09:10:06 AM »
Probably when George designed the pattern it was by concensus of the flyers of the day.  So the corner just looked like five feet, or pretty dammned sharp, or something like that.  It would be intersesting to know if the people involved thought that the pattern would be around this long.  A radius is hard to measure on a sphere.  The plane might have to actually peform a one foot radius to be measured as five feet from the judges eye view on a flat plane.

I say this because Bob McDonald told me that his dad, Rollie, had some input on the pattern with George, as well as other flyers who were very active in the late 40's early 50's.  Bob also mentioned Milton Boos as another flyer with some input.

There are a lot of qualative judgements being made, like the pretty airplane, and debating the measurement of the radius gets somewhat esoteric.  Wild Bill probably did come up with a plane that was capable of a five foot radius, but I am sure that the ship lacked the neccesary asthetics.

Offline john e. holliday

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #29 on: November 30, 2011, 09:20:49 AM »
Beauty is only in the eyes of the beholder.   My Nezband "Gold Brick" got me an award at VSC one year.  After as I was saying my so longs to Bill and his lovely wife, he stated, "I have flown that design here a couple of years and never got an award".   We had a laugh about that and I thanked him for the design. H^^
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Offline Brett Buck

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #30 on: November 30, 2011, 09:28:10 AM »
5 feet = 1.524 meters = 5 feet this not 4.9 ,been taking math lessons from bill morrel?    LL~ jim ivey

    Since neither is applicable to the current rule book, I wouldn't consider this a big problem. In fact, the old rule book actually did say 1.5 meters instead of the proper 5 feet. It was a mistake carried over from the FAI rules.

   And, math notwithstanding,  Bill Morell's (note the spelling) posts are readable, literate, and properly constructed. And not tiresome.

    Brett

Offline Brett Buck

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #31 on: November 30, 2011, 10:02:23 AM »
There are a lot of qualative judgements being made, like the pretty airplane, and debating the measurement of the radius gets somewhat esoteric.  Wild Bill probably did come up with a plane that was capable of a five foot radius, but I am sure that the ship lacked the neccesary asthetics.

   And they had other problems. Essentially all the compromises that where made to absolutely minimize the turn radius took away from other aspects of the flight. Like flying in a straight line reliably, and tracking in round maneuvers repeatably. A common misapprehension of the people concerned with the 5 foot turn radius spec was that it was frequently *the only thing they considered*. It became an obsession. The 5 foot radius was three words in a 5000 or so word document. The name of the event, for instance, was and is "Precision Aerobatics" - not, importantly, "Minimum Turn Radius Demonstration". Most of the airplanes dedicated to shooting for a 5 foot radius corner were also incapable of being flown precisely. A flaw that Bill and other recognized and attempted to solve with additional technology, like the exponential response control system, where they were trying to desensitize the airplane around neutral to make it possible to fly it consistently outside the corners.

     Ultimately, it was an insoluble problem. If you managed to get a 5 foot radius, and any practical flying speed, the *time* required for a corner becomes so short that it was physically/neurologically impossible to accurately control the exits in other than perfectly consistent conditions, because the feedback of your nerves is far to slow to respond to deviations. A perfect 5 foot radius corner takes a grand total of 100 milliseconds from start to finish at a typical 78 feet/second.  If you hit the 5 foot radius but your 90 degree turn comes out 85 or 95 degrees at random, you will lose every contest you enter, because it will cause the judge to quite correctly downgrade you for shape errors.  

Moreover, if you can't immediately go from a perfectly straight line to the minimum radius - and  you can't-  the "lead-in" and "lead-out" from the corner will cause the effective radius to be much larger. That means you have to go from perfect level flight to near maximum deflection of the controls in a time much shorter than 100 milliseconds. This is also not physically possible. Making the controls soft around neutral just makes it worse, and the extra parabolic section of the corner taken to move the controls makes the corner look much softer than its ultimate minimum radius. And all you are doing it trying to convince the judge that it is tight since no one is actually measuring it. Everything that we have done over the years, in fact, it to make the airplane MORE sensitive around neutral rather than less, to make it easier to abruptly go from a straight line to a radius. Do that, and you can't fly the extremely short-coupled gigantic tail volume and tail aspect ratio airplanes in level flight any more. It's essentially an impossible set of constraints.

    Many times, the "pretty plane" accusers blame this on the excess weight caused by (quoting Bill) "many layers of lacquer buffed to a high sheen" but even if you made it weigh ZERO it doesn't solve any of the problems above. And even if you did manage it, that's only one tiny aspect of a huge set of rules.

    That's why I said that I didn't think Bill actually liked stunt competition very much. Because to be successful at it, your goal is not to solve a series of  engineering problems. Its to make it LOOK LIKE you are flying correctly in a subjective evaluation and convince someone to give you, with a second or two of eyeball evaluation, a high score. If you think it should be something else, and cannot accept that as it is, it will be a very frustrating event.

    Brett

  
« Last Edit: November 30, 2011, 02:55:47 PM by Brett Buck »

Offline John Stiles

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #32 on: November 30, 2011, 10:34:08 AM »
   Its to make it LOOK LIKE you are flying correctly in a subjective evaluation and convince someone to give you, with a second or two of eyeball evaluation, a high score. If you think it should be something else, and cannot accept that as it is, it will be a very frustrating event.

    Brett

 
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Offline FLOYD CARTER

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #33 on: November 30, 2011, 12:03:23 PM »
Unfortunately, too many judges prefer "excessive smoothness" to "accuracy" in regard to corners.  This has prompted many flyers that I know to do squares which are nothing more than circles with slightly straightened sides.

Some time ago, I flew at a contest where a fellow flyer commented that my squares were "frantic", when in actuality, my corners were closer to "corner" than just part of a round loop.

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Offline Brett Buck

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #34 on: November 30, 2011, 02:51:59 PM »
Unfortunately, too many judges prefer "excessive smoothness" to "accuracy" in regard to corners.  This has prompted many flyers that I know to do squares which are nothing more than circles with slightly straightened sides.

Some time ago, I flew at a contest where a fellow flyer commented that my squares were "frantic", when in actuality, my corners were closer to "corner" than just part of a round loop.

  A perfect example of what I was talking about. I would guess that your corners were might have been tighter, but in doing that, you made other far more obvious and easy-to-downgrade errors. That is exactly and precisely what I meant by focusing too much on the minutia of one point in the rule book, and probably not adhering to the rest of it as well. 

    All told, if two patterns were equally good in other ways, but one had tighter *looking* corners, the tighter one will win 9 times out of 10.
 
    Brett

Offline Joseph Lijoi

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #35 on: December 01, 2011, 05:13:42 AM »
  A perfect example of what I was talking about. I would guess that your corners were might have been tighter, but in doing that, you made other far more obvious and easy-to-downgrade errors. That is exactly and precisely what I meant by focusing too much on the minutia of one point in the rule book, and probably not adhering to the rest of it as well. 

    All told, if two patterns were equally good in other ways, but one had tighter *looking* corners, the tighter one will win 9 times out of 10.
 
    Brett

This is the price we pay for the life we lead.  I am sure the top flyers can figure out what judges want and then give it to them.  It is all about appearances anyway so I would think the game is to nail what is obvious and nuance what is not.  Which is the way it is.  Regardless of what is in the rulebook you are flying to a judge, not the rule book, so discussion of defining something is kind of a lost cause, unless you can put a stopwatch on it.

Offline Howard Rush

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #36 on: December 01, 2011, 01:27:59 PM »
My impression is that what the judges want is what's in the rulebook.  If one hits the corners too hard (as I am continually reminded), the shapes go bad.  Still, it's kinda fun to slam a corner just to see what angle the plane will emerge from it.
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Offline Brett Buck

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #37 on: December 01, 2011, 01:57:24 PM »
This is the price we pay for the life we lead.  I am sure the top flyers can figure out what judges want and then give it to them. 

   It's been my observation that the judges want to see things that look like the pictures in the rule book. It's really as simple as that. All the blather about picayune details of and the exact wording of the maneuver descriptions, spherical geometry, etc. is almost entirely moot when it comes to actually flying and judging the events. Everybody makes LOTS of mistakes on every flight and all that anyone is looking for are the shapes - circle, square, and triangles that are really no different from what kids learn in kindergarten, of about the right size, and a lack of  obvious mistakes. Doing it that way has won an awful lot of national championships in the last 25 years and probably before.

    I doubt that very many people make adjustments for what the judges seem to be liking, and I think that if you do that, you are probably making a mistake.

      Brett

     

Offline john e. holliday

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Re: The Father of Modern Stunt
« Reply #38 on: December 02, 2011, 08:05:42 AM »
Isn't that what caused Paul Walker a World Championship one year?   If I remember right a member of the group told him the judges were giving scores for a different pattern style.   But, in the long run, a smooth pattern will out score a very crisp pattern in most of the places I have been. VD~
« Last Edit: December 02, 2011, 08:45:12 AM by john e. holliday »
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