I'll argue this one all year long. A very large percentage of our aerobats as currently designed and built have wing loadings so low when ready to fly that they fall well below even average loading numbers. If you have a 28% plane with a wing loading of 28-34 ounces per sq. ft. then you have a plane that will fly quite well if it's set up in other areas properly, referencing the c/g specifically, with surface deflection amounts as a secondary.

Just because everyone desires the lightest wing loading possible does not mean that the lighter plane will fly better that a heavier one. Why do you think Carden aircraft (generally relatively heavy) are such great planes? It's a combination of many, many different factors that makes a plane perform as well as it can, not just the weight or the size of the engine. A friend of mine was a competitor in this past XFC that went for the heavier plane instead of the lighter for better performance in certain maneuvers.

As for being harder to land if the plane is a little heavier than the lightest one, well, yes and no. A pound or so over the lightest one will not be an issue at all for someone that knows how to fly, and land, and sets the rest of the plane up correctly. Myself and others been landing planes of all weights and sizes dead stick for years and damage usually does not occur unless I (ya know, me, the operator) make a mistake. I had an engoine quit in hover on an 18-1/2 pound 28% Extra at about 40' of altitude. End result was I bent the gear and broke a blade on the prop. Some might have smashed the plane at a lighter weight under the same conditions. Perhaps that's because I also flew gliders of various sizes and weights for many years, but none of them had an engine or motor. I've also flown planes with much higher loadings than 34 ounces a foot and they too flew quite well. Of course you can notice a difference between planes of different weights. You can notice the difference between a 14 and a 16 pound bowling ball but so what, they both do the job they were designed for?

You guys scare the daylights out of people with all that stuff about a plane being a little heavier or having a marginally higher wing loading as being difficult or having poor performance. If all you fly is "push the sticks to the corners" 3d then I might agree with you that the heavier plane will require slightly more skill, but I've flown 3D with a 20lb-28% Edge with a Brison 3.2 and had just as much fun as the next guy. It even landed good dead stick.

Dead engines in a hover is a good way to break any plane regardless of the weight. If you're not high enough then you don't have the room for the plane to maneuver into a position where the controls can become effective for controllability. The plane could have weighed half what it did and the results would likely have been the same. As for a model flying as best as it possibly can, well, that is totally in the fingers of the flyer and has been proven to many times over to be argued. Just watch someone with skills and talent fly somebodie's plane that they've never touched before. More often than not it is flown to a higher level of performance than it had before experienced.

What a lot of people really seem to want is a super light ballistic winged projectile, not an airplane. The fact seems to be that a whole lot of people learned to fly without ever learning how to manage energy and all they can do is use the propeller to direct the plane using overly generous surface areas and deflections. Manufacturers provide a weight range for a reason, and that's for the buyer to have a target weight to shoot for. It's not because the plane will not perform well a little over the higher number noted on the box.

BTW, the last time my total expenditures for a plane was only 2 "gees" was quite some time back. Believe that I like my planes to fly as well as they can, and so they do, but I'm not going to sweat big bucks to shave a few ounces, or even a pound or two on larger planes. If I have an engine that will correctly fly the plane I want to put it in, guess where it's going? I can move anything I'm putting on the plane to offset any c/g issues, so that one's out of the way. If you're only a "yank and bank" flyer then you will have more difficulty with a heavier plane. But if you know how to fly, and more importantly, land, then you won't have any problems at all. Will the plane fly differently than one a little lighter? Of course it will. But will it fly poorly or with difficulty? Not hardly.