ORIGINAL: bob27s
ORIGINAL: Ed Cregger
Oddly enough, IIRC, when the Dirty Birdy was first made available to the public, there were no knife-edge maneuvers in any of the patterns that I can recall. Knife-edge was still an exhibition maneuver displayed by the likes of Jersey Jim Martin with his infamous Banshee. The fact that the SPA has seen fit to incorporate point rolls and knife edge is kind of disappointing to me because many of the popular models of that era were not designed for that type of performance.
Of course, one can enhance knife-edge performance in even a doggy model by spinning a large diameter prop at fairly high rpm (10K rpm). Could this be why the .91 Pumpers on 30% nitro are favored by a knowledgable few? <G>
Ed Cregger
4 pt rolls, 8 pt rolls, reverse knife edge, and slow rolls were all candidate pattern manuvers when I first started playing with pattern in 1978. Im pretty sure they predate that quite a bit too. Masters had a fairly large list of manuvers to choose from.
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Believe it or not, those maneuvers (point rolls/knife-edge) did not become really popular until the FAI left behind maneuvers involving autorotation (snap/spins) and went to the very smooth, fast and jet-like flying style. Yes, by 1978 they were headed well in that direction. That was about the time that the rear exhaust/enclosed tuned pipe designs emerged, or slightly earlier.
The Dirty Birdy was around in the early seventies because folks did not take to the Super Kaos. The Super Kaos was kind of the pattern equivalent of the real world's first straight wing equipped jet fighters. It was an emergency measure that acted as a stepping stone to the swept leading edge wings with a straight trailing edge, or slightly swept rearward trailing edge.
Of course, this is just my opinion.
Ed Cregger