Nose up attitude...

From: Marty Sasaki <marty_at_mss.tzo.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:11:57 -0000

I was looking at past issues of INAV, having past issues on-line is a
great service, and ran across a note about the droop tail F1D's. One
of the reasons for the thrust line was that the prop was more
efficient when the thrust line was in-line with the flight line
(forgive me if am using the wrong terminology). The wing angle of
attack (relative to the motorstick) is significantly greater than
traditional designs.

When I was first starting out I was given a bit of advice by Ray
Harlan and that was to trim the model (in this case a LPP) so that it
would fly slightly nose up. It was important not to go too far, but
the nose up attitude immediately slowed the prop RPM and dramatically
increased my time with the same rubber and prop.

It is a common rule of thumb to have the wing at 0 incidence relative
to the thrust line. It is often stated that this is to reduce drag.

The droop tail models seem to contradict the other "wisdom", but they
seemed to have worked fairly well. What is the current thinking about
drooped tails? Are they really only suitable to the conditions at the
mine? Do they really contradict tradional designs?

Marty Sasaki
Received on Tue Jan 23 2007 - 13:18:04 CET