Way back in 2006....I had a pair of electric Prestige planes....one with Hacker A60-20S direct drive outrunner, and the other with a geared Neu....both spinning the same props at 7500 - 8000 RPM. Weight of the systems were nearly the same. The Neu clearly had a broader torque curve and responded faster to throttle inputs (accelerating or decelerating), and this is exactly what all the electric gurus (Bob Boucher, Sean Plummer, Shawn Palmer) I spoke with the year or two before told me I would find. The general consensus was that at a given power level, a direct drive motor would need to be about 20% heavier than a geared setup (motor and gearbox) to have equivalent throttle response (acceleration, broad torque curve), and through 2007-8, I found that to be pretty close to accurate after running several other Neu motors and several A60-S (short, ~21 ounces) and A60-M (medium, ~25 ounces) direct drive outrunners (all in the Prestiges).

Current day, the Plett Advance and Hacker Q80-S are substantially improved in terms of torque curve and acceleration, but, they still fall short of a geared Neu (single prop) or Neu Contra. The Q80-XS while still having very good top end power, is noticeably slower to accelerate than the Q80-S. Granted, I have not owned all the motors, or flown them all in the same planes, but I have enough experience with them to feel comfortable making these conclusions.

One of the biggest benefits of a geared system (single prop or Contra) is the mechanical drag of the system. When the throttle is reduced, there is no spool down time....in a downline, the RPM does not drastly increase as with a direct drive setup. At the exit of downline (absent using the ESC brake), the RPM of a direct drive system will be very high, and the bottom 20, 30, 40% of the throttle is a "dead zone" and will essentially do nothing until the airspeed of the plane and the RPM of the motor has decayed. With a geared system, the RPM does not increase as much and the dead zone at the bottom of the throttle is minimal (if any). Adding the ESC brake into the mix substantially narrows the gap between direct drive and geared, but, the geared system is still more honest/true/linear/natural in terms of consistent throttle response at all attitudes and airspeeds.

Brenners Contra on 9.89 gears with 22x22 props is FAST (with 1513 Neu), and the throttle reponse and braking are still good. The only other setup I've come across that will match it for top end is a bigger Neu (1515) running a 20.5x14.5. Of course with the lower pitch props and bigger gears, the Contra will also fly very slowly.

Sorry for contributing to the hijacking of the Allure thread . But...I think this does relate to an idea / scenario Bryan has stated a number of times - planes fly better when they are being "pulled" as opposed to coasting. Geared systems don't spool up as much, and as such, spend very little (if any time) coasting.