RE: More progress on my Bates SBD!
I think you are all correct to some degree. I believe the heavy wingloading, with a relatively high-bank turn and no rudder input bled the speed off and caused the stall. However, Dion is right, it just didn't fly clean and I believe there was something fundamentally wrong in the aerodynamics. Maybe a warped wing, non-symmetrical washout factor, bad incidence on wing/stab/or both. Who knows... but I don't think it was tailheavy.
This is one of the many reasons I'm not interested in rebuilding it. If I did, it would take many months or longer to get it back in fighting shape. Even then, it would be heavier than it is now due to repairs, never look as good as it did, and probably would still have all the same aerodynamic issues if not more. It just would never fly the way I wanted it to, so it's not worth puttling all that work back into it to be dissapointed again.
When I built this plane, I had a different job with a lot more time on my hands. I started a new job a few months ago and my building time has dropped from 40 hours a week to about 8 hours. At that rate, any new scale plane I do will take 4-5 times longer to complete. I'm just not going to put 10 years into a plane to see this happen again. For now, I'm going to stick to easy builds and ARFs until I'm a more experienced pilot. Big heavy warbird ARFs like the TF 51, Skyshark P40, etc may be in my immediate future. Even with those planes, I can add "my personal touch" to make them a step above the other ARFs in scale appearance.
I simply need more experience flying heavy warbirds and figuring out what makes a plane fly good and what will make it fly like a wild child. I'm not going to gain that experience on a 2000 hour project again... I learned my lesson. For now, it's fly, hunt, work and relax. Building is not even on my mind.
Tom