ORIGINAL: flyintexan

With regards to the cannabilizer, and anhedral...my thoughts. The addition of the dorsal fin/s can and does generate a cleaner airflow over the fuse. The reduction of required right thrust was one of the big selling points for me. Among other benefits, there seems to be a noticable lack of pitching when applying rudder in level flight. Anybody notice how this generation of F3A planes generally uses less aft sweep on the wing? I think placing the fin/s near or just aft of the CG will generate the best force arrangement for rolling manuevers, however, as stated by Jim W., the further forward you go, the closer you can get to unfavorable tendencies.

As Mike has done, I have flown my design with and without anhedral stabs. At first, I thought there was a pitching tendency in the plane with the straight stabs. After some careful checking and CG adjustment (the straight stab plane was tailheavy), I found that the straight stab required zero trim with rudder in one direction and only a slight mix with the opposite rudder. The testbed with anhedral requires zero in both directions. This only means that with my "particular" fuse shape, there may be a very slight benefit with the anhedral stabs. I think we can all agree though, with or without strakes, fins, winglets, anhedral, etc., many of the F3A planes available today are very, very good (well, the ones that are tested before going to market [&:] ).

-mark
ERAU 93'