RE: Will increasing the thickness of a biplane wing decrease the stall speed, or just add useless dr
Pitts and Eagles, along with Gee-Bees, Comets... locally, are all miserable failures!
I know of a Christen Eagle that cost over $3000 to build... has yet to fly, but it sure breaks props when the guy tries!
OTOH, locally Charlie Richardson(now deceased) designed and built an Eagle using fibreglass molds... (lots of lightness) which flies well.
When an EXPERIENCED flier is flying it.
Pretending such planes are easy to fly is disengenuous.
They attract a lot of enthusiastic but somewhat inexperienced fliers, who try and fail to get the d**n thing into the air.
Experienced folks who have no problems with these things and get all upset when less experienced folk do, need to fall back and regroup.
These are NOT for the inexperienced flier, no matter how simple someone WITH the experience demonstrates "ease of flight" can be..
Sucessful Gee-Bees, Pitts, etc will be LIGHT, flown fast, and by experienced pilots.
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A scale Ultimate, which I fly, has the same brick tendency as the SIG Ultimate, which I also fly, with power off.
Both are a blast to fly with power on although the thin scale wings can't do much to overcome all that drag!
And the SIG has more drag than any two airplanes should!
The Stearmann... fine under power, must be on final when the engine quits...
Lightness AND experience make these things flyable.