ORIGINAL: Ryan Smith

I talked to Robert Vess about it after I put mine on my airplane, and he used a lot of big words such as ''and'' and the'', so I didn't understand much. But what I did take away from it was that the canalizer stops the spiral slipstream, and entrains the air going to the vertical fin. I'd like to put an airplane in a wind tunnel and do some flow testing on it, because to me, the vortices and turbulence of the air as it goes off of the back of the canalizer would seem to make the rudder less effective and have the opposite effect of what it actually does. Robert felt that those factors were probably negligent in the grand scheme of things, which is why the canalizer works as well as it does.

That being said, the effects I noted when I put mine on were:

1. More drag for more constant speed. The airplane that I am running this on still has a 1.70 in it, so I can't give an accurate comparison with regard to power loss with the addition of the canalizer. I can say that I will still have them on electric airplanes, though. I actually made mine with an airfoiled pylon and wing that has the same airfoil as the wing. I don't know that it makes any difference having an airfoil versus a flat plate, and honestly, I went the route I did because I thought it would look better and I could make it stronger and probably lighter than a flat plate.
2. More rudder power. I normally fly with quite a bit of rudder throw even in my normal flight condition because I like a balanced feel between the amount of input it takes to get the airplane to do something when the rudder and elevator is used together. I cut my rudder throw in half, and still had more rudder power than I had before. I can do a pretty tight knife edge loop on low rate.
3. Reduction in mixing. I got rid of all of the mixing I had in the airplane, and it was pretty damn close. I will trim the airplane out more this spring/summer. Winters here in central Illinois are not very conducive to flying model airplanes, I've unfortunately found.
4. Somewhere else to put stickers. This is self explanatory.
5. Table for placing drink prior to flight. This is self explanatory.
6. Cool conversation piece. Also self explanatory.

All in all, I think it was totally worth it. After flying an airplane design for five years without it, I think I have a pretty good gauge as to what it does. They are very effective and quite worth the effort. I thought I had a picture of mine on my phone, but I don't have the SD card that it was saved to on here. I'll see if I can dig mine up and post it here. I know this thread is about Akiba's new airplane, but I'm good at continuing tangents and derailments.

Carry on.