springcreek

My Feedback: (3)

SPAD is an acronym for Simple Plastic Airplane Design. The entire objective as stated by swampgas is Build Cheap, Build Fast, Go Fly, No Rules regarding design. Obviously, an airplane must have certain characteristics to fly. I don't think people should be so surprised at how well they fly. One can buy the little rubber powered balsa sheet wing jobs for under a buck and they fly pretty well, also. I will say I doubt anyone will be winning any pattern or aerobatic contests with Spads as they don't lend themselves to giant scale type of building and as well as they fly, they aren't nearly as precise in their manuevers as a well built balsa ship. For a 40 size airplane or smaller, they do alright but they are not floaters. I have seen swampgas's SPAD biplane fly and it is impressive but also has a large engine. I guess to sum it up, I would say that SPADs have their place, combat and fun flying. I learned a lot from flying my Spads, and applied that knowledge to my larger aerobatic airplanes. I learned to flat spin with a SPAD and spun it into the ground learning how to recover. Total loss amounted to about $3. I can handle that. Now, I flat spin my much more expensive airplanes with confidence that I wouldn't have otherwise. I like flying SPADS as an experiment in high winds, in combat, or in fun fly competitions where the airplane is more at risk than normal. It seems to be a lot more fun when you are enjoying the challenge of flying without the anxiety of crashing. After all, this hobby is all about having fun and one can definitely have fun building and flying SPADs.