ORIGINAL: Don Szczur
Accuracy vs precision.
When practicing a maneuver, the first thing you have to do is get it accurate. Don't worry about wings level. Don't worry about perfect radius for each corner. Fly it geometrically correct and centered, with wind or without. A square loop that is off center or just not quite square will not get you a 10. It does not matter how precise you fly it, it will not receive a 10... even if the lines are perfectly straight, wings are perfectly level. Once you get the accuracy there, the precision is the easiest part. It's the icing on the cake... the last brush stroke to the painting.
Measuring the Brio for accuracy is what I did tonight. Front to back and side-to-side, some aspects were off 1/8 of an inch over the length of a meter. Some of this will be sanded out, other aspects will be left as-is. The plane is straight enough. No one measurement point is accurate, but you can spend a lot of your time taking precise measurements. Take the traditional tip-to-tip measurement with regard to the rear fuselage, as shown below. The left tip would need to be moved back some (rotate the wings counter-clockwise looking from the top).
"........Front to back and side-to-side, some aspects were off 1/8 of an inch over the length of a meter. The Plane is straight enough....."
Don,
I guess you got a good deal on that model! Must have by how thrilled you are with it.
"straight enough" I guess we all have our standards. Perhaps that is what makes some enjoy the sport and others get frustrated with the quality of the models they pay high dollars.
Take your metal 1 meter ruler and check the sides along the thrust line to see if the fuse is straight mine was not. Mark the ruler so you use the same side to the ruler. Mine one side of the fuse had the tips of the ruler off the surface by about 1/8" at each end. That's Ok perhaps the fuse is curved. Nothing says it has to be straight. So on I go to the other side of the fuse and the tips of the ruler touch and middle has a gap of about 3/16". So I start looking at contours and the fuse sides are not the same left and right. one is more flat and the other curved. Not only are the sides different shapes but the banana tree it was hanging from must have been leaning to the left.
You guys are some extremely talented pilots to overcome the Brio and its quality.
Allen March