Bobby:

Sounds like the Kyosho kits you have are typical 60s and 70s Jap kits, they picked the heaviest and most brittle wood they could find for them. Regardless, give me a PM/email with the shipped price on the Connie if you would, please. Or if you don't care it wouldn't bother me if you just posted it. If I don't like it someone else might want it.

You have 5600 hours in a rotorbird as a fish spotter? Surprised in that amount of time you didn't take a saltwater bath a few times. I don't trust helicopters over dry land, I can't imagine going over water all the time. At least not if I had a choice.

And I have some very old planes too, my oldest in flying conditiion is about 42 years old now. Another that needs some repair is even older.

I have never wanted a Vee tail, I like sport models, and while the bad points of a Vee tail are negated on a racing or general class plane the adverse roll with rudder input has always kept me from using one. Now if the Vee were inverted, the adverse roll would be converted into a positive roll for the turn direction, but then there would be the worry about dragging the tips on the ground, so I haven't seriously considered that either.

But the angle around 110 degrees seems to be where every body using them does agree.

Flying a triple you should never have a situation with two engines out unless you're pushing your fuel. As a fairly high time pilot you know that when one quits you look for the airport, and don't wait for another to quit. Now I will admit a turbo fire in #3 engine of your L-1649 halfway between Travis in California and Hickam in Hawaii doesn't leave you very many options, but your Tri-Poke should always be able to make the runway. And the dynamics of the thing means losing one of three is more like a 50% power loss than one third.

And having VMC below stall speed is very nice - my Tiggerkitty has that feature, but another feature it has is the inability to maintain level flight on a single engine, so with it when you lose an engine it is coming down. No argument. The C-3/10 I've posted pictures of is much different. I have made a complete takeoff, fly around the peapatch, and land with no prop on the right engine, all power coming from the left side. I feel sure all the Duellists and the Twin-Air could do it too.

Using a "Conventional" Vee tail I think you might find you'll have to keep some aileron to counter the adverse roll, even the P-61 using spoilers for main roll control still had vestigal ailerons, though it's said that was mainly to give a more conventional "Feel" to the pilot, I don't know for sure.

Trexler wheels make landings look good if they aren't inflated to high, if they're blown up hard the almost good landings look a lot worse.

With your ARF Slow Poke you really could do some development, first change to the Vee tail, then hang nacelles on the wing, most likely be easier to put the spoilers in a wing with all new construction, though.

If you are planning your Tri-Poke to be fully aerobatic, then build it with the stab at zero, the engines at zero, and a symmetric wing.

Planning on spoilers for roll control tells me you will be more of an upright plane, though, and to keep the Slow Poke characteristics you'll have a high lift airfoil. This being the case, the stab will want some negative, as a guess about -3 degrees with the wing at +2 or thereabouts. This will give you strong positive stability for the plane, and avoid the "Nose-Down" appearance in level flight. Along with this you probably will want the nose engine with -4 or -5 downthrust, and the wing engines, at a guess, down about 2 degrees. With the positive wing and negative stab the downthrust is needed to minimize trim changes with power.

Go here:
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/Wher...1063414/tm.htm
for a discussion on incidences and thrust line.

Hope this has at least been some help.

Bill.

PS: Should have told you to see post #5 on the thread the URL takes you to. wr.

<<edit to add PS>>