Dick

I think the only flaw in the approach you mention is in trying to guess what the airplane response is going to be. Back when I worked for a living at McDonnell Douglas we could have indeed proposed a cause and effect such as you present. Certainly something similar to that went on in meetings to figure out what was causing the pitch up with the F-4 with the earlier straight horizontal tail. Incidently it doesn't look near as mean with the straight tail. I love the wing tip dihedral with the anhedral tail and teeth on the radome.

Assuming the money was there a wind tunnel model would be built with the capability to vary things such as the anhedral angle, its vertical and longitudinal relationship to the vertical tail and rudder (with and without deflections), fuselage width and depth and with some other generic fuselage and wing (but assuming some useful sizing requirements).

Then in the wind tunnel they would test the matrix of possibilities, look at the results, exclaim what in the heck was wrong with the data, repeat most of the runs, acknowledge they didn't have a clue as to what was happening and then someone would claim that they knew that it would turn out that way all the time! Whoever did it first and often enough usually wound up being boss eventually.

Honestly, someone that has mind experiments so precise that they can give exacting results with respect to something like this is someone that I must stand in awe of but most of the time I tend to think that it is arm waving that usually has left out some very significant variable. It is interesting but not precise.

In Hanno's models the models (I can't remember the name of the model before the Curare but it was published in MAN I believe) that led up to the Curare looked very similar except for the tail anhedral. I also must believe that he was talented enough to determine the difference in flight. He is a great talent at this flying thing.

If I were sufficiently interested in really knowing the difference I would build a typical pattern model with removeable/interchangable horizontal tail mountings. The vertical position and anhedral angles would be the variables. Keeping the mass of the removeable parts the same would minimize the variables and make a good experiment. Then it becomes a matter of flying maneuvers and observing results. It really would be difficult to evaluate with different complete models because of the variables that can change from model to model, much less the expense.

I normally am so happy to get one model to fly more than 10 times without the big oops that I am not the person to do this but it would be interesting wouldn't it.

Ben