ORIGINAL: WinterHawke
Several years back, late in the season flying my old Great Planes Fokker Dr.1, the centering spring came detached on the rudder stick on the transmitter - in essence, no auto return to neutral.
The triplane became extremely difficult to fly, as the tail wandered all over the place as I started chasing neutral. The landing was at best an arrival (fortunately no real damage that mission).
Lee McD
Thanks, Lee. An excellent example of one of the changes we make when we scale down and R/C an airplane like a DRI. Flying a full scale Triplane is much closer to what you experienced without the centering spring in your transmitter.
My only full-scale experience with an airplane that was truly unstable in yaw was the Jenny. I have considerable time in other light planes that are marginally stable in yaw, but the difference between marginally stable and unstable is the difference between day and night. Even though Jenny has a fixed fin, it is too small to make the plane truly stable. It was very difficult for me to fly since I wasn't used to sensing sideslip by the wind in my face. The first trick I discovered was that I could look at my feet to see if the rudder bar was cocked off to one side, and then center the bar visually. Then, at least for a while, I could fly reasonable straight. Then I'd have to look back down at my feet again to see how I was doing.
Dick