ORIGINAL: paladin
I was taught to fly war birds by someone who flew the real ones and flew models. He said the problem modelers have is due mostly to poor technique. They do not understand stalls, or how the plane acts while heading to a stall. Elevator does not fly at 35mph and stall at 36mph, it gradually looses effectiveness. The key is to recognize this.
It is not about heavy planes are more quirky than lighter planes. But we don’t have the type cert. For the heavier plane. I don’t use wing area, rather wing volume loading to decide what skills are needed to land the plane. The advantage to volume loading is it accounts for aircraft size.
So how is this done? Take your wing area and multiply it by the average wing thickness. I do this by measuring the root max thickness and the tip rib max thickness add them together and divide by 4. Multiply that with the wing area and you have the wing volume. There are 1728sqin/sqft.
Wt. / wing volume in sq.ft.
1 - 0 – 250 trainer / floater
2 - 251-400 light war bird / sport plane
3 - 401-600 war bird
4 - 601- up heavy
If you fly all planes like a type 4 you will have success. If you fly a 4 like a 1 you will rebuild it.
My 2 cents
Joe
Good post Joe.
As for full scale pilots and RC, although many can do both quite well, Matt Chapman comes to mind, most full scale pilots I know can not fly an RC plane if their life depended on it.
There are two main reasons for this.
(1).. 'feel' is much of flying, especially when taking off and landing. You can feel your aircraft through the seat, and stick. Not so in model aviation. You fly with sight, and sight alone. And it is much harder to judge speed and distance (or feel when the plane is creeping up to that stall) if your not sitting in the plane.
(2)... pilot perspective. Everything is in front of you in full scale, and up, down, port, and starboard don't change. They do in RC, and not many full scale pilots, or anyone else for that matter, can make that mental subconscious adjustment in the split seconds it takes to successfully fly RC. Why the average person watches what we do and may be entertained, but has little appreciation for just how difficult it really is. Praise (or condolences
) from my peers is much appreciated by this pilot. They well know what it takes.
Beyond knowing 'how and why' airplanes fly, full scale experience does little for the guy wanting to be good at RC, IMO.