Speed Secrets Volume #1


I thought I would talk a little bit about setting up the center of gravity on your racers. There are a few different schools of thought on this, but I’ll just describe what I like in a proper cg. I primarily use the cg to adjust for drift, what I mean by this, is that if you put your plane on knife edge and fly it directly at yourself, does it drift slightly to the canopy or landing gear as its coming towards you? That is what I call drift, and I’ll explain one reason why it happens. If your plane is slightly nose heavy, in level flight you have to compensate for that nose heaviness with up elevator trim. This is great when you are flying level, but as soon as you roll to vertical that slight amount of up trim will cause your plane to drift slightly to the canopy. To me, there is nothing worse than making a great turn on #1 where your lined up perfect coming to #2 and to have your plane start to float in on you. When this happens, you are stuck with pushing the plane out with down elevator, which many racers are not all that comfortable doing. Conversely, if you are slightly tail heavy, you need to compensate for that with down elevator trim. When you roll vertical, your plane will drift away from you. This is frustrating, because you will be giving up the inside track, and flying a longer course. Drift can often be controlled by simply moving the cg forward or backward; depending on which way the plane is floating on you. I know many people that use the cg to adjust for level flight in knife-edge, but to me, controlling drift is more important than the speed loss due to a couple clicks of rudder. When you consider that you will be negating elevator trim, in trade for rudder trim, it is really a wash anyway. Not that my way is the best, but it seems to work best for me. I absolutely hate adjusting my #1 turn to compensate for a plane that drifts. I like them all to be the same, and eliminating drift is the easiest way for me to make consistent #1 turns.

Earlier, I mentioned pushing a vertical plane away from you when coming in to #2. This is a skill I highly recommend the newer racers work on, and perfect. When I test fly a new racer, I set up the throws per the manufacturer recommendation to get through the first few flights. As I start to dial in the throws to exactly where I like them, I slowly reduce my down elevator throw. I get it so low, that when I’m coming into #2 a little inside, I can simple push full down elevator and the plane will slightly float out without any drastic maneuvers. This can be very handy if you pull a little to hard on #1.