HI Dick, I’m not a designer but have also been seeing this trend of planes that the contra suites better where the streamlined front end/canopy has required little or no modifications vs the blunter front end/tall canopy the planes have needed some modifications. Also a taller fin should help with the stability. Modifications that have been working for several of us have been to thicken the rudder trailing edge, ¾“ to 1” wide, add stab fences, 3/8” tall worked well on the Spark, or add a dorsal fin, have not tried this on any of my planes but Tony had this on his Onas.

The Wind I have been flying since the NATS should have been very easy to get the contra working well since it has a streamlined canopy, a tall fin and of course designed for the contra but the wing design has been giving me some issues. Now two wing designs later the plane is flying very well with no modifications to the fuse. Several of us from D5 invaded the D4 Championship this weekend and I received some positive feedback on the performance of the plane with the double tapered Genesis wing currently mated to the fuse from Bill Ahrens, Mike Mueller and other pilots.

It was really nice to experiment with the wings and see that the overall speed of the plane did not change significantly with the different wings but I did notice a speed change when changing from the Spark to the Wind. The Wind was much easier to get a good speed while at times the Spark would fly too slow and I think this is mostly due to the shape of the fuse and maybe the width of the fuse.

Hope this information helps you Dick in the design of a contra specific plane.

Dave Snow