Ben,

I have the same questions and have for years. We used to get four servos for primary plus one for retracts in a 3" wide fuselage. Next we almost doubled the size and started hanging them ouside.

Alot I fear has to do with a new generation who just won't spend the time and design effort for tight control set ups. It can be done and is still done by a few of us but the 'newer group' seems to be content to mount servos anywhere. I shouldn't just point out the 'newer group' as many who followed (note, I did not say progressed) to giant scale from the old days do so also and question it not.

True, part of it is 'free' tail weight to balance gassers but that weight is slowly coming down. I've heard 'tight control surfaces' as an excuse 'ad nauseum' and in irritation asked the "servo in the breeze crowd" to come over and show me where my control surfaces were sloppy-----end result----I stopped hearing about 'tight direct drive'. Of course not one of them has made any attempt to get them out of sight-----I just don't hear the 'tight' excuse any more.

On the BARFS it is simply way easier to 'non engineer' external mounts.

I would like to see a return to clean airframes. The Jet guys do it in a lot more restricted areas than we routinely see today. Their speed and control surface loadings also eliminate the 'to prevent flutter' argument. It CAN be done.

Summation, I think we've got Lazy Design Illness among us hereinafter 'LDI'. With a little effort we could probably come up with some Gov't. $$$ to eliminate the pending LDI scourge ;-).