Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Curious to see what the board`s opinion might be regarding what plane/type of plane requires the most skill to consistently fly (takeoff/fly/land) well. My personal vote goes to warbirds with wing mounted landing gear. To consistently land them in a scale like manner requires hitting a "sweet spot" on approach with throttle and elevator. Not always easy to do, at least for me!

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

I think any "type" of airplane has its own characteristics. If you fly that type of airplane regularly, then you become familiar with that "type's" behavior and techniques for flying them.

The trick is to shake it up. Keep a fleet of very different types. Constantly change from one type to another form session to session. Keeps the hobby fresh and makes you a better pilot.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

I'll just throw a few out that have bad reputations. Tequila Sunrise, Great Lakes Bipe, some CAPs. Those planes are hard to fly, have bad tendencies, and can be a real handful on landing as well.

I would also think jets would take a bit of skill to get them up and down in one piece. But then again, I have never flown a jet.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

LOL....I'm still having a tough time flying a trainer!!! 

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

A trainer in a stiff breeze can amount to anxious moments, for sure!

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

I have found the Giles 202 to have a lot of bad tendencies, but it could have just been the one I flew. The Mustang is notorious for bad ground handling. Any plane that is set up wrong becomes quite a handful. As was said I would guess jets are tough but I have't flown one either. Small aerobatic planes are said to be tough to handle too.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

As far as landing is concerned, at least for me, planes with fuselage mounted gear (everything from 4*s to Edges, etc., etc.) are a snap to land compared to a warbird. Because their landing gears are so much farther forward than that of a warbird with wing mounted gear, they simply don`t nose over.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

But there are some exceptions. The day I soloed I got to fly someones Reacter EP and it was easier to land and take off than my trainer and I loved the way it flew.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

The most difficult plane to set up and fly properly that I know of would be the Italian CANTZ bomber. YouTube has a couple videos of it in operation. The first one was of a crash just after takeoff. It was rebuilt later, and after some very meticulous tweaks and balancing, it was finally able to stay airborne with a highly experienced RC pilot at the sticks. The Great Lakes Bipe and Tequila Sunrise that deadeye mentions are two runners up on the list. Jets and warbirds are quite easy to fly in comparison, according to my studies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6o-C6rD7bo

NorfolkSouthern

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Some of the S.P.A.D.S.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

It might not be the most difficult plane imaginable, but anybody who can take off, fly, and land a large scale Fokker DR-1 triplane smoothly and proficiently has my respect!

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Hey <font size="2">Tideflyer.  Do you know about the war bird fly in in Huntsville this weekend?  You can go to Rocket City RC club website for info.  Last years was great.  I'm gonna drive over from Ft Payne just to gawk.  I have 2 kids in school at T town.  Roll Tide!!!</font>

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Any of your overweight models that lug around all those extra ounces and pounds of poor design, unwise engineering, uesless extras and sloppy build technique....will prove to be hard to fly, always looking for a nice place to stall and crash.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Stevenmax, thanks for the heads up on the warbird event but can`t make it this weekend. Roll Tide!

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

I will fly most things if they are offered but I would pass on a Horten IX.

John Greenfield of the UK based qhost squadron bulit one for a couple of turbines. Tailess and finless the control system includes drag brakes on the top surfaces, this combined with the lag time inherent with turbines makes low speed flight and landings a real challenge.

Pics here [link=http://www.largemodelassociation.com/john_greenfield_horton.htm]CLICKY[/link]

But I also get panicky when asked to fly anything overweight, underpowered with a rearward C of G.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

It wasn't just the one you flew.

That is absolutely THE nastiest, meanest, most miserable creation ever devised to be given the label "airplane".

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

A guy at our club had one. One day just after take off, he went inverted and got to slow and went into a spin.[:o] Broke the right wing in half and broke the fuse in half. He said if it was a better flying plane with no bad habit, he would rebuild. ( now he is looking for a new plane, I think he is glad it crashed so he could get another one:D) I guess since it has such a narrow wing that it need a lot of airspeed.[&:]

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Eh...that's one of..oh...let's see...

Put it this way...for every G202 that's ever gone in, there's probably a unique and separate reason for each one of them. *heh*

Wicked, miserable, nasty little critters they be.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Landing my pitts is always tough, its bad when you carry more props than fuel!!

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

The only Giles I`ve ever seen fly, that I can recall, actually just fell out of the air in a turn. I clearly recollect that the plane had lots of airspeed on at the time, so I don`t know. They are apparently a bear to fly, though.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Glad I am not the only one.

DON'T BUY A GILES!

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Gotta give ya that one...the 2 I've built were no fun to land either. *heh*

And I'll tell ya...as fast as THOSE things went through props in my hands, the big one with the 23x8 Xoar got expensive QUICK! [X(]

======================

And there's the danger of a G202 for anything but the most experienced of pilots, imo...they are, quite literally, DESIGNED to surprise you like that.

The fact of the matter is, a stall is dependent not upon speed, but rather upon Angle of Attack. Pass the critical AoA for the airplane, and it ain't gonna fly any more.

The problem with the Giles is "many-fold". First, its design and "normal" setup lends it to some awfully sensitive tail surfaces. Even on what passes for "low rates" on nearly every ARF I've encountered of it the elevator is quite capable of exceeding the critical AoA in the blink of an eye...it's just that sensitive.

Next, look at the wing! It's like they took an Edge wing, and reversed it. Hrmm..let's see here...the Edge is notoriously STABLE and FORGIVING at high alpha...low/no wing rock harriers, that sort of thing. So...let's build a wing exactly the OPPOSITE of that! Yes! Quite literally, it was DESIGNED to fall apart at the first hint of a stall, and to do so with a vengeance.

Finally, while many of us "know" it, how many of us REALLY think about the fact that the airplane weighs more in a turn? It simply isn't a big deal for 99% of the aiplanes we've ever flown, or ever will fly. Sure, we know about G-Loading, but we just don't have it at the front of our minds normally. The Giles, however, is SO sensitive to the critical AoA, SO unforgiving to exceeding it, and SO easy to exceed it with...

It's a recipe for exactly what you saw...and airplane that looks like it simply dropped out of the sky (because it did), and was, to every observer, going "way to fast to have stalled".

============

I'm not saying they CAN'T be flown well...they absolutely can. And they are, in some regimes, one of THE most aerobatic things on the planet. In the right hands, they're capable of some things that make every other aerobat in the world sit up and say "Err...wut?"

I certainly wouldn't ever agree with "Don't buy a Giles!" either. They can offer the right pilot a mind boggling array of fun.

But they ABSOLUTELY demand that you understand every one of their "quirks", why they exist, and how to avoid having them bite you.

The thread asked about which airplanes required the most skill to fly well...and I'd put a Giles up against anything out there for that title.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

My first SPAD was a nightmare, I compeletly jacked that thing up. Out of everything I fly, I'd have to say warbirds are generally the worst. Not that they are hard to fly, or even land, but my p51 loves to nose over, and is almost impossible to taxi if the grass is even a tad bit high.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Having your very first dead stick with a Kadet L-T 40 and a 17mph cross wind.

RE: Most Skill Required To Fly Well?
 

Is the only Giles 202 everyone talking about the Cox version?

Here are the spec's:
When I first read the review on the model, I thought "what a load of crap". According to the review it was better than sliced bread.

Look at the numbers. It has a wing area of only 439 sq. in. which is only 3 sq. ft. - rather small for a 40-46 sized model. Then inspite of it's small size it weighs 5.5 lbs dry, or 88 oz. This gives a wing loading of around 29 oz/sq. ft. For a model for a typical sport pilot, this is very high for a small model with a short wing span.

Why is the wingspan of interest? Well induced drag is inversely proportional to the wingspan squared, and during landing the majority of the drag is due to induced drag. So small heavy models tend to drop out of the sky on landing.

So when you are selecting a model for your next project, be very aware of the numbers, and try to ignore the pretty package.