Hi Harry,

I take exception to your some of your statements.

I don't equate an airplane rudder to a boat rudder at all. I grew up on planes and boats.

As far as the aileron vs. rudder argument, it's been around for decades, and I don't really expect to change your mind on it. I will offer a couple of thoughts and a simple experiment you can try if you get a chance to fly in a full scale plane.

First off, think about what each control does: The elevator doesn't make the plane climb or dive; it rotates it about the pitch axis. The ailerons don't turn the plane; they rotate it about the roll axis. The rudder doesn't turn the plane either; it rotates it about the yaw axis. It's important to understand that when one of these controls changes the attitude of the airplane, it affects the other flight surfaces.

In the case of rudder, consider a yaw to the right. When the yaw happens, the left wing will momentarily have a greater airspeed than the rest of the airplane, and the right will momentarily have less. In most cases, this will result in the left wing naturally rising because it's got more airspeed than the right (I say "most cases", because there are some aerobatic airplanes that have been specifically designed to reduce or eliminate this tendency).

Now let's consider a roll to the right with ailerons. The roll happens because you are causing the left wing to produce more lift, and the right wing to produce left. When we learned about the relationship between thrust, drag, lift and gravity, we learned that increasing lift also necessarily increases drag. Notice that in this scenario, we are increasing lift on the left wing. What do you think the airplane does about the yaw axis? If you guessed that it momentarily yaws *left* against the intended turn due to the increased drag, you would be right.

The "adverse yaw" with the ailerons is extremely difficult to detect with an R/C plane, but it's obvious in a full scale if you look for it. Thus, my experiment: If you have an opportunity to fly a full scale plane, get into straight and level flight and pick a point straight ahead on the horizon. Then gently roll the wings back and forth with the ailerons. You will see that the nose of the plane yaws left and right *opposite* of what the ailerons are doing. (Disclaimer: I am not a full scale pilot, but grew up an aviation family, and have done this demonstration many times.)

Also worth noting is that, no matter which side of the rudder vs. aileron argument you fall on, you will probably admit that it takes 3 controls to properly "turn" an airplane (This is a general statement, there are specific airplane designs that work differently. For example there are planes with aileron and no rudder, and vice-versa). If you use "too much" rudder and not enough aileron, you get a skid: The pilot figure in your R/C plane is pulled towards the outside of the turn. If you use "too much" aileron, the pilot figure is pulled towards the inside of the turn - this is a slip. He probably finds the slip more uncomfortable than the skid because he's grown up riding around in cars, which "skid" every time they turn, so he's used to it. To do a comfortable, coordinated turn, you need the right amount of both. The rudder folks turn with the rudder and coordinate with the ailerons. The aileron folks turn with the ailerons and coordinate with the rudder.

Finally, amoungst the controls involved in a turn, the one that actually ends up doing most of the work of changing the heading is actually the elevator

Comments, criticisms and other observations welcome,
-Wade