Strange Planes
A couple of years ago I recovered a wreak out of the trash can, not sure what it was but it had a flatbottom shoulderwing and was just another sport airplane.
On the rebuild I added a aileron servo to enable elevons. Moved the CG forward to around 15% with a corresponding move forward of the main tricycle landing gear. Also added 20 degrees up reflex in the ailerons. Now the whole idea of this thing was to hide the fact that it had just became a flying wing so the bottom mounted horizontal stabilizer was removed, elevator was made rigid and the whole thing was remounted with a release mechanism activated by a servo. This ship probably because of the less than ideal airfoil for a flying wing Was very pitchy at medium to low speeds but very stable at high power and would do the most amazing inside and outside snaps, tumbles Which worked out well for our little gags.
The senario went something like this. I would taxi out and take off in a normal manner but at around ten feet the release would be hit and the stabilizer fly off with a loud report. Now pitching up into the vertical I would scream my head off help, help and my partner would run over and pretend to help me with the trims all the while the airplane would be going through its repertory of tumbles to finally recover and make a very bouncy landing.
Needless to say we had a lot of fun and the silly little routine was quite a success at several airshows.
John