ORIGINAL: BMatthews



CC, you read a lot more into my posts than I put there.

It doesn't matter if he had flown model or not. He related about others in trying to correct their own experience with the design by altering the wing or tail incidence without realizing what the actual cause of the behaviour. So I presented what I have found to be a better way to deal with the issue.

Adding excessive downthrust to a model that really needs a CG shift to a lesser positive position will do exactly what you said. The nose will tend to jump up when the throttle is chopped abruptly. That's why I suggested setting the CG before playing with adding a final seasoning of downthrust. And it's not only a high wing model that'll do that. A low wing model with an excessively forward CG and resultant decalage angle will do the same thing.

I suppose having to fight the model constantly COULD be seen as a form of machoism. But I'm not a ''wife beater wearing macho dude''..... I'm generally lazy and don't like arguments with my models. That's why I use my trim lever as a main flight control for my models that benifit from doing so. It's not an issue with a well set up aerobatic model since those are set so close to neutral that they fly almost the same from power off to full power. Sailplanes, on the other hand, benifit from using the trim almost constantly since it's hard to hold just the right amount of trim for more than a couple of seconds. And general fly around type designs can often benifit from a couple of trim adjustments at various times as well. Using the trim lever a lot on my sailplanes makes it easier for me to do well. With my poly ships I've often set the thermal turn using the rudder and elevator trims and then just stood there watching with my thumbs off the sticks for the next 5 minutes while the model flies in the thermal. Set this way it does better at centering itself than I can manage.

In fact I use my elevator trim so much that I installed 3/4 inch long 2-56 screws into the elevator trim levers on my old style transmitters. That way I could easily feel where the trim was located by the angle of the extension. I detest the new digital click trim levers since I no longer have a way of checking the trim position easily on one Tx and have to look at the LCD screen of the other to see where the trim is set.