ORIGINAL: seanreit
Ineffective at high angle of attack. You've got more flights on ROO's than I do, can't argue with success. I'm just suggesting that at slow speeds and high angle of attack, the fuse might have been doing the slowing rather than the rudders. Either way, I believe what you are saying, just not sure it had much to do with the rudders when a very non-conservative CG would do the same thing.
I just measured the speed break and rudder on my Rookie which happens to be the same dimension as the Roo and found the following:
• the length of the rudder is the same as the length of the speed break.
• the width of each rudder happens to be ¾ width of the speed break which means that the combination of the two rudder surface area are more than the surface area of the speed break.
My hypotesis then would be that the rudder deflection would give even more breaking force than the speed break when fully deployed.
I am going to contact one of the sharpest mind in this field (my good friend Mr. Bob Parks) and would report back with his reply.