Is this stalling? Or something else?

From: torqueburner <beammeup_at_fast.net>
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 21:38:44 -0000

I have had experience with a motorstick bending in the vertical plane. You trim the plane to
fly well at launch, but it stalls, stalls, stalls as the torque, and therefore the bend, decreases
over the length of the flight.

However, something else I have sometimes observed is similar to, but subtly different that
the behavior described above. The climb and cruise are normal, but as the plane is
descending it kind of hesitates - almost as if it has just turned into a headwind. As a result,
it drops down a foot or two, nearly vertically, then resumes flying normally. Sometimes this
happens only once during the flight, somes two or three times.

Looking back to our SO biplanes last year, they seemed more prone to this behavior than our
monoplanes, but perhaps this is just coincidence.

Any ideas as to what could cause this? It is under discussion on the Science Olympiad
Student Center message board. One post mentioned stab tilt, or perhaps excessive stab tilt
as the reason, but I don't see how it could be connected to this phenomenon.

Dave Drummer
Received on Sat Feb 24 2007 - 13:42:32 CET