ORIGINAL: RaceCraftRC
Landing my pitts is always tough, its bad when you carry more props than fuel!!
Gotta give ya that one...the 2 I've built were no fun to land either. *heh*
And I'll tell ya...as fast as THOSE things went through props in my hands, the big one with the 23x8 Xoar got expensive QUICK! [X(]
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ORIGINAL: TideFlyer
The only Giles I`ve ever seen fly, that I can recall, actually just fell out of the air in a turn. I clearly recollect that the plane had lots of airspeed on at the time, so I don`t know. They are apparently a bear to fly, though.
And there's the danger of a G202 for anything but the most experienced of pilots, imo...they are, quite literally, DESIGNED to surprise you like that.
The fact of the matter is, a stall is dependent not upon speed, but rather upon Angle of Attack. Pass the critical AoA for the airplane, and it ain't gonna fly any more.
The problem with the Giles is "many-fold". First, its design and "normal" setup lends it to some awfully sensitive tail surfaces. Even on what passes for "low rates" on nearly every ARF I've encountered of it the elevator is quite capable of exceeding the critical AoA in the blink of an eye...it's just that sensitive.
Next, look at the wing! It's like they took an Edge wing, and reversed it. Hrmm..let's see here...the Edge is notoriously STABLE and FORGIVING at high alpha...low/no wing rock harriers, that sort of thing. So...let's build a wing exactly the OPPOSITE of that! Yes! Quite literally, it was DESIGNED to fall apart at the first hint of a stall, and to do so with a vengeance.
Finally, while many of us "know" it, how many of us REALLY think about the fact that the airplane weighs more in a turn? It simply isn't a big deal for 99% of the aiplanes we've ever flown, or ever will fly. Sure, we know about G-Loading, but we just don't have it at the front of our minds normally. The Giles, however, is SO sensitive to the critical AoA, SO unforgiving to exceeding it, and SO easy to exceed it with...
It's a recipe for exactly what you saw...and airplane that looks like it simply dropped out of the sky (because it did), and was, to every observer, going "way to fast to have stalled".
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I'm not saying they CAN'T be flown well...they absolutely can. And they are, in some regimes, one of THE most aerobatic things on the planet. In the right hands, they're capable of some things that make every other aerobat in the world sit up and say "Err...wut?"
I certainly wouldn't ever agree with "Don't buy a Giles!" either. They can offer the right pilot a mind boggling array of fun.
But they ABSOLUTELY demand that you understand every one of their "quirks", why they exist, and how to avoid having them bite you.
The thread asked about which airplanes required the most skill to fly well...and I'd put a Giles up against anything out there for that title.