OK, my turn!

I'm going to be much shorter, and only relate it to things like attempting to stop a plane plummeting from the sky.

The fact is that a wing can partially or completely stall in many conditions. Two of these are very relevant to flying a model.

One is the tendency to snap which is a very complex process indeed and I won't bother to go into it here!

The other is a progressive or sudden stalling of the wing as the aircraft slows down.

The rudder, for many reasons, is normally the last control surface to stall, and is therefore the only one left to use in certain circumstances.

Anybody who has flown a rudder-only plane in the past (or a galloping ghost plane to all you ancient readers!) will probably tell you they managed to loop a rudder only plane! It is possible!

Using ailerons is the most logical thing to do when correcting unwanted roll, but can be disastrous when slowing down to land. Let's suppose the left wing has dropped and right aileron has been applied to correct it That means the left wing now has more lift and the right wing less lift. Unfortunately, the left wing also has more drag (higher lift = higher drag) and if this drag which makes the plane yaw to the left. If this yaw is too great (due to the aircraft being too slow) the plane will, in fact, roll TOWARDS the left wing, not away from it.

The result is the ailerons seem to work in the opposite way to expected and you find yourself inverted 5 feet from the ground!

Using the rudder simply avoids this difference in wing lift (almost) and you are more likely to land upright than inverted!

Oh! This posting wasn't as short as I wanted!



David C.