Design > Stunt design
engine, wing, elevator-stab center line; why not in a straight line?
Mike Ferguson:
--- Quote from: Air Ministry . on September 28, 2020, 11:16:28 PM ---Note the TAILPLANE ( & elevator ) section . Seems Casale thought highly of this version, in retrospect .
--- End quote ---
Compare it to Bob Baron's Avanti II,also published in Flying Models (I think about two years earlier than this Spectrum). They're the same plane, just with different cosmetics.
Jim pretty much watched Bob beating everyone at the 1981 Team Trials, and thought that if he had Bob's plane, he could fly it just as well, if not better. And so that became the Spectrum Mk III. He won two Nats with that basic Avanti design (the 1985 version has a few minor differences, but not many). So it was probably a reasonably good assumption.
PJ Rowland:
Yeah I like to tell people what works, but noone listens..
Ohh I see your point :)
phil c:
--- Quote from: Ken Culbertson on September 29, 2020, 10:28:05 PM ---I am going to get roasted on this one. Thank you for saying what I have believed like forever. Much is said and written about "muscle memory" in sports. Your brain learns a pattern and commands the muscles to do something. It doesn't care much how much up you used on an inside when it learns how to do an outside loop. I don't discount those who insist on equal movement, maybe they need it, and many of them would clean my clock in a contest but I simply don't need it. My brain got trained early to follow that imaginary projection of the maneuver and it gives it whatever it takes up or down to achieve it. That does not mean that you don't need to trim to get the plane as equal as possible, you just don't make it the Holly Grail. IMHO the goal should not be to have a plane that turns equal both directions but one that you can turn equal both directions with the same effort.
Ken
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Good job Ken. You beat me to muscle memory, but nobody else mentioned it seriously. Anyone with good reflexes, loves to fly PA, and practices 1000 flights with one set up is going to have very solid muscle memory. Switching to something like the Avanti, which apparently behaves quite differently than other leading PA designs, is going to run into muscle memory issues. If they found it twitchy in level flight that is because it was- compared to most PA designs. Bob Baron must have had VERY good reflexes for it to suit him.
I had that happen every year when I picked up a PA(sort of) plane to fly at Brodak's contest.(God rest his soul). Going from a combat plane that goes exactly where you point it(and your muscles know it), it is very difficult to switch to a PA plane, or even a good sport plane. Muscles that are used to flying a plane behind your head and hitting a streamer that is nowhere near the other plane have a hard time compensating for a more stately PA plane.
It got very exciting at the last Brodak's contest I flew my "Bob Palmer" Smoothie. It is a very nice flying plane in good weather, but the winds were swirling around the trees a lot. This time just as I hit the top of the Overhead 8 entry a 20+ gust came over the trees an hit the outboard wing. The plane free flighted across the circle, I managed to and managed to recover and actually did do the maneuver by the book- with lots of wide deviations. Needless to say the score was lousy but the combat "muscle memory" reflexes did a good job of saving the plane.
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