Ok I'll start with a few generalities. These are my opinions, which I base in personal experience with both models and full scale aircraft. When something seems constant to both, it's worth forming an opinion.

Pattern planes are the ultimate balance. They are a trade off. if you want stability, you must give up some small degree of manueverability. That's pretty much a time proven hypothesis. It's bordering on law, and in full scale, it is law.

There is and never will be a perfect pattern plane. Anyone who tells you different is either misinformed and doesn;'t know any better, or is trying to sell you something. This comes back to my first though, that everything is a trade off. Every time you tweak some thrust, turn the incidence adjusters, add some mix, you're making one thing more nuetral and another more unstable. Balance is the key.

Set up: If you fly 100 people's different planes, you'll feel 100 different set ups. Pattern planes are a very individual thing. As an example: I have flown 2 airplanes that were set up by Troy Newman. (or at least that's what they told me, proudly I might add). Not picking on Troy, but everybody knows him so it's a good example to use. I think everyone would agree that Troy is a very good pilot right? To me, those planes were unflyable. I don't mean a little off, I mean "oh crap let me get this thing on the ground". After some adjustments on throws and expo, and a touch of mix, they flew great...to me. And I do fairly well in competition. I don't fly FAI, but I do fairly well. in both cases, the people in question said thier planes then flew much smoother. As a side note, niether of them fly FAI either. The moral? What works for one person in one class doesn't work for everyone. And that's not a knock on Troy ( I feel I have to add that disclaimer lately). That's just a fact. I'm positive if he flew my set up, he'd hate it.

Allright, feel free to either ignore this thread or enjoy it and use it. have fun, and be civil and learn, I hope to.

-Mike

{edited for better wording, I suck at that sometimes}