Hi Les,

I don't know that mine matches BV's recommendations, but I am now running reflex in my Bobcat (std, not XL). I originally ran flaperons per TonyF's excellent Bobcat setup doc, but once I removed the RAM 500 and installed the P120, there was so much residual thrust that the aircraft was reluctant to slow down for landing even with the flaperons deployed and the engine idled early on the downwind leg. That's when Chris (Huhn) suggested that we try the reflex. We just put in an arbitrary ammount (probably about 20 degrees up on the ailerons, at a guess), and kept the ratio of flaperon-to-elevator mix that I'd been previously running (but with reversed directions of course), and used that as a guess for the amount of down elevator needed. It turned out to be spot-on.

The reflex makes the aircraft fly much more nose high, thereby producing a lot of drag from the underside of the wing. As a rough indicator of the difference : the same landing circuits that simply would not slow the aircraft down when flaperons were used with the P120 at idle now require the engine to be at about 1/3 throttle for almost the entire approach. An additional benefit to this is that if you do have to do a go-around, the engine response from 1/3 upwards is much better than from idle upwards.

Note that the stall speed is a little higher with reflex, but not enough to make it an issue for me. YMMV.

For the first few landings I made with reflex, I made the approaches slightly too fast. I think what was happening was that I was conditioned (by my prior 60 or so flights on the aircraft while using flaperons) to having that combination of the nose-high attitude and the sink rate as indicating that the aircraft was very close to the stall, and so I was adding a touch more power when it was actually not needed. The aircraft wasn't feeling mushy, but I was probably still responding subconciously to the visual cues, without processing the fact that they now meant something different.

BTW, unless you are running a speed limiter, you might not want to advertise the thrust & weight you mentioned above, since it's actually higher than the .9 limit. Naturally, you just made a typo, right ? ;-)

Gordon