It appears to me that twins, and other multi's have a definate advantage flying CL stunt. The biggest handicap has been ourselves, wanting not one, but two honkin' engines mounted.
When I saw Paul fly his B-17 with 4 OS .15FPs, my eyes were opened. I have the advantage of having one of the best multi engined stunt pilots as a flying buddy. When we built the pair of Pathfinder twins, also powered by OS .15s, we found that using a pair of these smaller engines, totalling .30 sq inches, on a plane sized to what most people used at least a .40 or a .46 on, gave up nothing to the larger single engines. It seemed, as is probably a fact, that the increased prop disk area from two 9 inch props gave us the edge we needed.
The simple facts are that twins, using a pair of large engines, can, and do, handle the pattern with authority. The problem comes when the conditions begin to get edgy. Gordan has related that as the wind comes up, and the line tension goes up because of it, and the plane becomes uncomfortable to fly. He says that the plane may be capable of doing the pattern in those conditions, but, you wind up just hanging on trying to avoid the loss of the plane. As he says, you can't finess the plane under those high, line tension, conditions.
Smaller twin designs, using the smaller engines makes it much easier to do good patterns under wider conditions. And consider this. The prop disk area of a pair of 9 inch props, exceeds the disk area of the normal 60 sized prop.
The biggest draw back to twins, is learning how to effectivly set up, match, and tune, a pair of engines for best results. This is one of the many areas that Gordy excells. He can get a pair of engines running real sweetly.
For those of us less gifted, I believe that electric may well be the best answer. An added benefit is simple retracts. (Wooohooooo)
Bill, at first you'll be frustrated with twins, after a while you'll find them so much better than a single
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Topic: I'm starting work on drawing this one as a stunter (Read 2099 times)
