Wow! The legendary Dick Hansen replied. Thank you for your suggestion. I kinda evolved into building planes from those little radio shack rc cars. As I was getting bored with them I started taking them apart and wondered if I could use all those micro servos to make one of those 99cent gliders fly. Several proto types later (about 10 gliders) I was having no luck. Then I thought, what if I built one of those guillows 500 series gliders and use that as the air frame. As I was building it and doing research on another rc group (sorry) I concluded that to make that fly I was going to need to spend some real dough on real rc gear. The people I was talking to about the build had successfully converted and flown these planes.
Now keep in mind, at that point I had no real rc flying experience. They suggested shelving the project until I had some flight exp. I took there advice and bought an electric plane. I’ve been crashing that plane for several months now.
As usual I like to get in over my head, so I’m thinking about building a bigger plane for that ½ a contest that starts in Jan. I’m going to work with a friend of mine who has exp building and flying gas planes. I figured I’ll have him fly it, that way if the design is totally awful, his exp would keep it in the air for longer than 10 seconds.
Oh yea dihedral. What I’ve been told, is that dihedral helps a rudder only plane turn and recover from turns better. (more stable). Now if you have ailerons on you wing would dihedral be that important? My thought on it would be no. I’ve never flown a plane with ailerons so that’s why I’m asking all of you.
Oh and Dick Hansen, do the 4 basic rules apply to dihedral as well as cg?
1-If the plane is extremely light - the dihedral does not matter
2- If the plane is too heavy - it still don't matter.
3- If you got enuf power - nuthin else matters .
4-If you ain't got enough power - same thing.
Not to start another 8 pages of trouble or anything.
Thanks
Cp.