[Guest]

Originally Posted by TLyttle

... go look at a picture of a BV141, it flew fine...

Thats not quite apples to apples......

Its a far cry using a plane designed with offset in mind vs one that was not....

This is not something new, if you want a straight flying plane its gotta be built straight, ever see an Extra 300 with a crooked stab, that was used successfully to fly aerobatics in competition?......

[Jollidude]

With a pattern or Imac aircraft and an experienced competition pilot you will notice that the plane doesn't fly quite right. With a beginner or average sport pilot and a trainer or average sport aircraft you will not notice anything out of the ordinary. I agree with Noin, go fly your airplane and be more careful next time. The building of any model aircraft is a process of making small errors (or sometimes not so small and then trying to correct them. Go have fun with your airplane and leave the hair-splitting aerodynamics to the ones who do have to worry about it.

Cheers!

Jollidude

[Guest]

Originally Posted by Jollidude

With a pattern or Imac aircraft and an experienced competition pilot you will notice that the plane doesn't fly quite right. With a beginner or average sport pilot and a trainer or average sport aircraft you will not notice anything out of the ordinary. I agree with Noin, go fly your airplane and be more careful next time. The building of any model aircraft is a process of making small errors (or sometimes not so small and then trying to correct them. Go have fun with your airplane and leave the hair-splitting aerodynamics to the ones who do have to worry about it.

Cheers!

Jollidude

You will notice it on any aircraft, sport or pattern or pylon or whatever, whether or not it bothers you is the question. 1/4" is not really splitting hairs

Basic aerodynamics don't care if you fly pattern or not

[Flypaper]

If I was me I'd just wack a 1/4 off the long tip and be done with it.

[airframe]

I've done Alignment checks on Hercules aircraft, CF104, F18's and lots of other aircraft and we work with tolerances of .001 " If you scale those tolerances down for our use do they get smaller or larger. Smaller of course!! Does 1/4" out effect anything? Of course. Does it matter? Depends on you.

Mike Sebastien

I do not understand why, when Chad advises that airplanes should be built true he gets an argument.

When people see my racers fly I get the usual comments. "How does it fly so fast?" "How does it turn so sharp?" " How does it fly so straight?" "How do you keep up with it" Without being smart my answer is always the same. It is easy, I build them true and I trim them properly. If they are not built true then they canot be trimmed properly.

Ed S

[Guest]

Originally Posted by Ed Smith

I do not understand why, when Chad advises that airplanes should be built true he gets an argument.

When people see my racers fly I get the usual comments. "How does it fly so fast?" "How does it turn so sharp?" " How does it fly so straight?" "How do you keep up with it" Without being smart my answer is always the same. It is easy, I build them true and I trim them properly. If they are not built true then they canot be trimmed properly.

Ed S

Thats easy Ed Because so few in our hobby have flown properly built and trimmed models so its not an easy thing to appreciate. If I could give every modeller in the country a chance to feel what a precision model really flies like, I bet people would take the time to build them straight and trim them out.

[TLyttle]

That's what modelling is all about: bettering one's last effort. From that comes building and trimming properly, but for beginners just getting the beast to fly is usually a good start. If it crashes, it is usually from poor trimming, rather than poor building IMHO...

but for beginners just getting the beast to fly is usually a good start. If it crashes, it is usually from poor trimming, rather than poor building IMHO...

Exactly, and the reason it could not be trimmed properly is usually because it was not built properly.

Surely the message that we as experienced builders should be promoting to newcomers is the accurate and proper building of aircraft. I will not support the attitude of "Kind of stick it together anyway for now, but pay more attention next time". After the poorly trimmed model is smashed the likelyhood of a "Next time" is not very great.

Ed S

[TLyttle]

I have been involved in helping beginners for ~40 years, and I've found that most beginners come to you with a new model that has had no input from an expert during construction. My input was usually either before its maiden flight (which minimises the likelihood of failure and allows some adjustments) or after it had crashed and the beginner wanted to know why. It is also true that my experience is limited to f/f, c/l, and small r/c (sailplanes, SYS, etc), so test flights by the beginner would likely take place at an uncontrolled field.

Sure, it is better to correct construction errors when possible and have the beginner improve his skills at that point, but at the same time it is just as damaging to the beginner to tell him that he just wasted his time and money as it is to let him fly a poorly-trimmed model to destruction. Either way, his second attempt will still be a moot point. I've seen guys criticise a beginner's model to the point where the guy quits then and there; it is better to try to get the beast to fly (as long as there are no safety concerns with the construction), then tell him what needs to be changed for the next session.

I don't support the "kinda stick it together" attitude either, but sometimes ya just ain't there at the time...