Tall Paul,

You kinda sound like former president Clinton defining "is". I'm sure you have flown planes which are a delight to fly. We all have. Then we have also flown planes that are a nightmare due to poor flight characterisitics whether a rearward CG or a simply bad design.

It seems the thinner the wing tip becomes, the more likely the plane is to tip stall on landings. When you fly a plane with no landing gear, you want to get the plane to slow up as much as possible before touching the ground, because the ground beats the thunder out of the bottom of the plane on landing. In the past the planes where I get the wing tip really thin, show a tendancy to tip stall without any warning. They just radically drop a wing and next thing you know you're an acrobat turning cartwheels.

So lately I have gone with the nicer flying planes and just went with a flat wing tip. I'm not sure how much drag you really get out of this type of wing tip vs. a finely tapered tip to a clean edge. Would you see a noticeable speed increase with the thinner wing tip at 200mph?

I don't like to use washout due to the higher drag with this design, especailly at high speeds.

Blue Skyy