Yes the Rudder yaws the plane in the horizontal.....to make the turn and the Elevator pitches the plane when the wings are vertical to make the turn...You are correct.


And a rolling circle or a rolling loop is nothing more than a bad slow roll!


The only time you have no control coupling is on level upright or inverted and on knife edge if the plane is setup to mix out or doesn't having any coupling issues...otherwise you are using the coupling of wings say at 45 deg to make the turn for you...thats how its done.....


The critical part of the circles are the transitions...needing some rudder to hold the nose up while not at knife edge yet.....and needing some elevator to do the same when not quite horizontal....


Example....Plane is upright flying left to right...The roll will be to the right and the circle will travel to the left IE outside rolls....


First start with left rudder...this will yaw the plane to the left and you start to roll right..as you approach knife edge in the outside roller....the left rudder is already making the turn for you....then as you approach and reach knife with right wing down the down elevator starts to take over the turn and the rudder starts coming out.....Once you are inverted you go with the right rudder and this makes the left turn continue and as you approach knife the rudder is actually the same direction needed for knife edge and holding the nose up......and so on and so on.....

Take the inside roller....again left to right flight this time we are rolling left and turning left. Same left rudder is needed to yaw the plane to the left right? We are upright and to yaw left takes left rudder.

The problem is that if the roll axis is moving in the circle as in we are rolling left...we need right rudder not left to hold the altitude (keep the nose up).....But right rudder is opposite to the direction of the turn.....remember we are turning left. Soooo as we approach knife edge we need up elevator and a little more up than down because we are not on knife yet and the right rudder required to hold the altitude is pushing us out and straight or even a little to the right when the turn is suppose to be constant radius to the left. .....so it takes a little more elevator than in the previous example of the outside roller because your overcoming the force of right rudder.....

Then at inverted you need right rudder to make the left turn but as you continuously roll left you need left rudder to hold the altitude...so as you roll left from the inverter you need left rudder and it requires a little more down elevator to compensate for the yaw in the wrong direction....Once on knife the down elevator is king and the the same left rudder is needed to hold knife......so you start easing out of the rudder until you get level....

On both rollers inside and outside the rudder helps and hurts in certain attitudes.......The problem is people look at the starting and certain benchmark points around the circle like 90 deg of turn if the circle has even numbers of rolls....or is a single roll....But if the circle is say 3 rolls then the benchmark points are 120 deg not 90 deg....


You can't do a good circle it you only input at these benchmark points.....its like a slow roll because the plane is always rolling a constant rate and always turning a constant radius of turn....


It take a slow roll mentality to perform them well.....

I'm not the best at them....but I do know the physics behind them and my pattern plane has zero coupling....

Take hand held model and put the plane in the circle anywhere in the circle....and then yaw the plane left and yaw the plane right....pitch the plane up and pitch the plane down.....These combos of both pitch and yaw (coupling in your head...cross controlling with the sticks) is what make the plane roll and turn at the same time.....You will see that the proper rudder to hold altitude for the inside roller is the wrong rudder to make the turn....and the opposite is true for the outside roller.....

Good luck trying it

Rolling Circle and rolling Loops are the hardest thing to do well....They can be done but done well is another story...that's why at the TOC and in the F3A finals sequences they are rolling circles and rolling loops...In 2000-2001 the F3A finals sequence had a 4 turn roller from inverted with the rolls reversed first one outside next one inside and so on.....The current F-03 finals schedule for the 2003 worlds has a 1 roll loop from the top in it.

The F-5 sequence has a 1 roll loop and a 1 roll 1/2 loop in it....The F-07 sequence has a rolling figure S with 1/2 rolls reversed a 2 roll circle with reversed rolls and another half rolling loop....


These are some fun maneuvers that are tough to accomplish with precision.....but look very impressive when done properly.

Troy Newman