ORIGINAL: Alex Voicu

I used a NACA 64 A 012, which is a laminar airfoil. As far as i know, it is used on many pattern models these days. I'm not sure about the reasons why it was initially introduced, but i can take a guess why it is so popular.

If you look at the pressure distribution of a regular airfoil (like NACA 0012 for example), you will see that the pressure is very high close to the leading edge and drops quickly towards the trailing edge. This means that the resultant lift force is located closer to the leading edge and far away from the center of gravity, meaning that the stab needs to generate more lift to counter the moment created by the wing lift force.

For a laminar airfoil the pressure is more equally distributed along the chord, meaning that the resultant lift force will be placed closer to the center of gravity and the moment created by the wing will be smaller. This way the stab needs to generate less lift and can be set close to 0 deg. incidence; the model will behave more ''neutral'' and probably won't need too much trim over a large speed envelope.