Re: RE: Survey of U.S. F1D fliers before 55 cm rules change

From: <joshuawfinn_at_gmail.com>
Date: 07 Feb 2014 16:58:19 -0800

I personally think .6 g motors were a good idea, though I certainly understand the pain of them. There's definitely the rightful desire to put more rubber on the plane, but to do that, you would have to make a longer motorstick and the model gets more fragile and then the prop gets bigger and so on. As such, 55 cm would be a much more challenging event on unlimited rubber. As it is, the .6 g motors have allowed me to develop motorsticks which have withstood literally hundreds of flights on launch torques in the .5-.6 in-oz range in the past year. I probably made over 1000 flights last year and only had two motorstick failures, one from a motor which slipped off my old hook design, and one from a hub which came apart at full torque.
  
 I really have to think that if you spread a 300-350 mg motorstick out to 18" (and yes, I really think they would get that long), there would be a lot more motorstick failures.
  
 Reducing the motor weight is bad because it is guaranteed to lead to even shorter nosed models to keep the balance correct, and there would be lot more propeller hangups and probably more carnage (so says someone who has had a prop hang on the wing during first climb). There would be other issues, too...probably a drive toward 200 mg props to get the CG further aft.
  
 -Joshua Finn
  
  
 Good flying,
 Joshua Finn
  
Received on Fri Feb 07 2014 - 16:58:20 CET