Don,

One of the reasons I thought "Mr. Smoothie" would be an ideal subject is that, with its tall, flat-sided nose section (upright engine, no cheeks) the fuselage would provide a good lifting surface in knife-edge flight. If only the prototype had had wheel pants, it'd be perfect!

The really good pilots seem to split the difference between a constant knife-edge and the traditional "bank and yank" flying style. They'll come up to about 89 degrees of bank for the turns, then gently and smoothly roll out just a few degrees -- say, to a 50- or 60-degree bank -- for the straightaways. They're not using a lot of aileron deflection, but neither are they relying entirely on the fuselage for lift in the straightaways.

Also, I would caution against focusing too much attention on the fuselage "airfoil" because you're not really using it much. If you go into a turn at 89 degrees of bank and pull "up" elevator, the turn (actually a half-loop in a horizontal plane) will launch the airplane slightly upwards as it comes out. This means that even with zero lift from the fuselage or the wing, the airplane will follow a long, shallow, ballistic arc rather than a perfectly level line.

At QM40 speeds, it may take the entire length of the straightaway before you notice the airplane beginning to settle towards terra firma. Therefore, the amount of lift you need -- and the amount of right rudder trim you need to generate that amount of lift from the fuselage -- will be barely noticeable.

If you want to test this theory, give Ed some rum and tell him you need to borrow one of his fuselages for a minute. Scrape off the "horizontal stabilizer" (no great loss; it was illegal anyway) ... muzzle-load the remains into a potato cannon ... stand at the starting line ... align the barrel to an elevation of 2 degrees and an azimuth toward Pylon #1 ... and fire! Q.E.D.!

Euclid of Ohio