Radio Control: Sport and Aerobatics
BIPLANE controversy revisited: I received a letter from Gerry Oliver (Reynoldsburg, OH), who said he was "... amused by the monoplane/biplane controversy in the May 1990 issue. Although I like both bipes and monoplanes and couldn't care less whether a biplane competes in Pattern, there was an article in the February 1990 issue of Plane and Pilot that supports your position and completely refutes Mr. Dreden's observations on Pitts aircraft (in the May '90 issue-RVP). "Plane and Pilot (a full-scale aircraft magazine-RVP) interviewed Patty Wagstaff, who competes with an Extra 230 (a monoplane-RVP) in world championship Aerobatics."
Radio Control: Sport and Aerobatics
AN UPDATE on the "toad." You may remember that, in the April issue, I wrote about Paul Verger's attempts to "detoad" an unsatisfactory airplane by using all the magic of a Futaba 1024. Paul didn't end up with a prince-he had a toad on life support. Well, Paul called to report a breakthrough. It seems that when Nat Penton (deQuincy, LA) heard about the struggle to detoad the airplane, he called to offer his services. Paul Verger has popularized Nat's reputation as a high priest of voodoo aerodynamics in his column in the K-Factor. (Remember? That's the newsletter of the NSRCA.) Anyway, Nat figured that this problem was right up his alley. He listened to the symptoms and said he'd get back with the detoading team of Paul, Mike Hayden, and Jim Fife.
Radio Control: Sport and Aerobatics
ONE of these days I may learn to stay away from controversial topics. Probably not, though. It's fun to wait for the response to a column about certain topics. The downwind turn is a good example. Radio Control Modeler's Ken Willard and I have milked the downwind turn for many an article, and I doubt that any proponents from either side have changed sides. My latest venture into controversy was published in the March issue of Model Aviation. I commented that I didn't think biplanes would ever be truly competitive in Pattern. I still don't think so. Nevertheless, not everyone agrees with me.
Radio Control: Sport and Aerobatics
WHAT'S all this fuss about noise? Just about every issue of Model Aviation has something about reducing aircraft noise. Competition Pattern fliers are under increasing pressure to reduce the noise of their aircraft. It wasn't too long ago that most Pattern aircraft had noise levels around 110 dB. Now, almost nobody has a problem meeting the FAI's F3A class 98-dB noise requirement. At the recent World Championships one Pattern flier had a noise level under 88 dB! The difference between 110 dB and 88 dB is enormous. If I remember the equation for dB correctly, a 6-dB decrease is a 50% reduction in sound pressure level. So, the sound pressure level at 88 dB is only about 8% of what it is at 110 dB. That's major improvement! Pattern fliers seem to have the noise problem licked. So we're in good shape, right? Well, we're not in as good a shape as you might think.
Radio Control: Sport and Aerobatics
"To whom it may concern, . . . I have been flying RC planes for about 4 1/2 years now. I started with a Goldberg Eagle 63. Over time I was able to perform various stunts such as loops, barrel rolls, inverted flight, touch-and-go, etc. I recently purchased and built a Goldberg Sky Tiger. My problem is that I can't get the plane to turn with the rudder (left or right). "When I use the rudder, all the plane does is a flat turn. I can't get the plane to bank unless I use the ailerons. When it is banking and I try to level the plane out with the rudder, it acts as if it's side-slipping. Say I'm banking to the right and I give left rudder to roll out of the bank. Instead of the plane rolling to the left and level flight, the plane stays in the bank and the nose goes up as if doing a sideways flat turn. This tends to cause a loss of altitude.
