Since the original question as to whether ailerons add to the lift in nuetral has been answered quite well (Yes they do as they are a part of the wing area, regardless of gaps, etc).........
Iam going to look at this "elevator during turn" again.
Why "slight"? In a 45 degree bank, you'd get about the same contribution to tightening the turn as you would to raising the nose, wouldn't you? In an 80 degree bank, you'd get more contribution to the turn than to up. And while you would certainly get additional lift, additional lift is what you want if you are turning more tightly, isn't it?
Yes, you are right. Iguess I didn't make it clear enough in my first posts ( I was posting from work yesterday
). I agree, the elevator will tighten the turn a bit due to the horizontalvector. Beyond 45°, it will do more turn tightening than nose up, that is true. (I believe somewhere in my first post I said something about that, just maybe not clear enough) BUT, that being said, the primary reason for using the elevator in the turn is to hold the nose up. Again, you take a couple flight lessons in full size and you will quickly learn that.
Even in turns with banks angles of more than 45°. One of the excersizes early on in flight training is steep turns, ie: 60° bank. Even then, the lesson is to hold constant bank angle, and maintain altitude with
elevator. Let the turn radius sort itself out. The primary use of elevator in a turn SHOULDBE, to keep the nose up, NOT to turn tighter. While it does work, if you are just yanking to try and tighten up the turn, you are doing it wrong. People have been killed by trying to do this in full scale aircraft when slowed down and turning from baseto final approach.....theturn is overshooting the runway so they pull backto force it around and boom, stal, spin, crash.Now, with R/C airplanes, we can get away with it because our wing loadings are low enough and power/weight ratios high enough, so most guys fly this way. And it works fine......untilyou get into a high wingloading, lower power/weightratiowarbird or some such scale airplane.
When Ifly R/C, I tend to fly smooth and gentle, same as I would in a full scale. Only when Iam horsing around do I use banks of more than 45°. Ialso teach my students to fly this way, rather than a "bank and yank" style of flying. The reason being, not only does it prevent the "split S" issue brought up earlier, but it also prevents stalling due to the increased load factor (Bax mentioned this). Ihave seen more guys stall due to pulling too hard in a turn than Ihave seen "over-bank" and split S into the ground, especially with the larger, heavier airplanes. Get guys into the habit of turning gently and properly right from the start.
So, while it is entirely true that more elevator DOES help tighten the turn, especially in steeper than 45° banks....that is NOTthe way it should be used. Elevator is to maintain altitude, bank angle controls turn rate. (In reality, the turn
radius also depends on wind direction and strength, and airspeed. ie: an airplane in a 45° bank will have a smaller turn radius at 100mph than at 200mph.)