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Old 02-15-2006 | 09:16 AM
  #10  
da Rock
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From: Near Pfafftown NC
Default RE: Ultra Stick and Roll Coupling

Ernie, I was hoping a real expert would jump in on your question, but they haven't so I'll throw out a few words.

When a dihedral airplane yaws, the wing that yawed back winds up seeing less angle of attack that it saw before the yaw. Obviously, the wing that yawed forward sees more angle of attack. That outboard wing gets increased lift from the increased AOA so it "climbs". The inboard wing has just experienced a reduced AOA and that give is less lift so it "dives". And both working together cause the model to roll in the direction of the yaw. All this comes about when the airframe is forced into the yaw by the rudder or some other "force". If the wing has ailerons and they were deflected, all simplicity ceases to exist because a bunch of other things happen.

But taking the simple situation where an anhedral wing is forced into yaw like a dihedral wing, then it's still fairly simple, but not as simple. The outboard wing will see a different AOA for either. It will be more for the dihedral wing, and it will be less for the anhedral wing. It's somewhat less simple for the anhedral wing because the situation we all visualize starts with our model tooling along straight and balanced. When our models are doing that, they're usually holding some positive AOA, at least when they're holding a steady altitude. So the outboard wing on the dihedral airplane already is feeling some positive AOA and with the yaw, simply sees more positive AOA. It's increase in lift will just be more (whatever is up the L/D slope drawn on the chart for that airfoil). A lot of airfoils have a L/D "bucket" that shows up on the airfoil chart around zero AOA. What that amounts to for this situation is that when our anhedral wing that's flying along with some positive AOA gets yawed, one wing will go from a positive AOA through a zero AOA to get to a negative AOA, and might dance through that bucket. Or not.... What happens with an anhedral wing just isn't as simple to predict is all.

I'm flying an anhedral that's about 2.5degrees. It's also a cambered airfoil and thanks to Chinese craftsmanship, actually has a somewhat different airfoil in the right wing than in the left. And I've had to heat warps out of the sucker twice so far. And just last night, cut off a really screwed aileron and put it back straight. So my experiences flying an anhedral are muddled at best. But I think that I have most everything sorted and TODAY SOON will give the sucker another flight or two.

But I have goten one strong impression from flying that potatoe chip so far. I've switched the ailerons to differential throws. The airplane seemed to show strong yaw away from the turns when the turns were aileron/elevator turns. And the model would do fairly flat rudder turns. (Which is what your question leaned toward.) BTW, the rudder has somewhat minimal authority. And it's a highwing airplane, so will naturally resist roll induced by rudder induced yaw. So what do I know..... chuckle....