Perhaps, after the crash?

For those of us who know Dick, we would probably characterize him as intelligent, innovative, resourceful, quick-witted, thought provoking, open minded, and fun to be around. I'm sure others that know him better than I could add even more. FWIW, I am proud to know him and consider Dick both a friend and mentor. I do not consider him arrogant, self-admiring or egotistic...I hope in time others will see him in the same light.

As for CG placement on the foamies I've found that the vertical position of the CG plays a large part of my opinion of their handing qualities. I find that making sure that the thrustline passes through the CG eliminates large pitching and yawing moments with power changes. I continually tweak the thrustline and battery position until I'm happy with it. Also I found that things we never really see on normal aerobatic models like gyroscopic precession and prop normal force have a lot to do with the stability and control (S&C) of the foamie. Originally (before good batteries light strong materials and small equipment) we had to use very large props and small airframes to obtain hovering thrust. On some of my original designs I had 14" props on 30" span models. What was funny was doing knife edge passes with zero rudder deflection because the moment generated from the prop normal force balanced the directional stability. Once the weight of the models was reduced we could run smaller props and get rid of these prop effect issues. The only other time I'd seen prop normal force be significant enough to cause real S&C problems was on flying wing UAV's. I find these models very interesting from an S&C viewpoint. I also feel like they 3-D better than my 40% aerobats but seriously lack the precision that you can obtain with a larger model...I hope to change that eventually.

All the best,

George Hicks