ORIGINAL: MTK
ORIGINAL: dick Hanson
SFG is -I believe - George Hicks idea.
George is an aeronautical engineer by training and vocation.
also a active modeller who does not "go along with the flow " when it comes to design work.
His little biplane foamie design "Tensor"sold by Horizon a few years back was an exercize in SFG uses.
If you tilted inthe roll axis- the model did NOT turn -it just drove merrily along with one panel down the other up. It was sometimes very disconcerting to fly as a turn, required rudder - always . I would say, as a model designer, he is as good as it gets if you are looking to figure out or fix an aerobatic setup.
EDITED
Geez, I know of George. I should have known that I suppose.
The original appendages on a model was pioneered by Nat Penton about 25 years ago give or take. George has discussed shop with Nat many times over the years. Nat is a good friend and we bounce concepts off one another occasionally.
MattK
The "enhancers" George developed ,really DO add improvements to 30% and smaller models .
In playing with them I did not concern myself with any factor EXCEPT
"what direction does the air really travel at high angles of attack"
The obvious (no tunnels red'd) result wa that air really does take the path of least resistance and the "enhancers" dam the air in it';s s race to slide around the tip
As experience is the real proofin anything, I tried taking off th plates on my Showtime -replacing -over n over and found that at high angles of attack and stallining speeds, the model instantly stabilized using the enhancers (SFG's)
Some full scale aerobatic stuff uses funny tip plates like I used on my EDGE
PS say "Hi" to Nat- He was buying and flying some of my models back then -