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Couple of comments.

Price. Rubber specifically. For the beginning flyer, DON'T SWEAT A RUBBER STRIPPER. You can win most regionals, and many state contests with standard 3/32 rubber. Modify the prop pitch to match. Buy a bunch of that. When you are flying consistently 80 to 90 percent of the top times you hear, then you might consider custom rubber widths to get that extra 10%. But unless you are in one of the very competitive Michigan or OH regions, you won't need it. If you are, you can probably borrow a rubber stripper instead of buying it. Just ask nice.

Tails. I think the straight stab with the whole tail turned is largely for convenience. It's easier to build square and off set the tail boom than to build consistently angled tips. Its also easier to change the offset to change the turn radius that way.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

carneyf1d wrote:this post goes out to some of the more experienced fliers...
i use wing tips on my stab for most of my planes, when weight isnt a major issue...but do you guys angle only the wingtips for the turn and have a straight stab relative to the fuse, or make straight wingtips and turn the whole stab. ive almost always seen the whole stab turned, but i was just wondering if the alternative might be better.

Don't quite understand what you're saying...

I have angled wingtips, obviously. The plane wouldn't be stable without them. I offset the wing so one side is longer than the other.

Two years I used stab tips on a stab that was perpendicular to the fuselage. Last year I took off the stab tips and added a high rudder that I did angle a bit. Usually I roll the entire stab a bit as well.

jander14indoor wrote:

fleet130 wrote:Wright Stuff Div. B

Big foot stomper here! This page has the actual DRAFT rules being edited by the rules committees NOW. AND a pointer to where you can enter your comments on the rules. If you want to influence next years rules, here's an opportunity to review and comment, but you must do it NOW.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

I've registered to their forums for commenting on rules for other events but they won't approve my registration...

EDIT: Maybe they did!

Registrations are activated manually 2 or 3 times a day (including weekends) except for holidays and big sailing events. Unfortunately this is necessary to prevent hit and run spornographers and other undesirables from posting.

The more information you include in your profile, the easier it is to validate your account. Don't register for multiple accounts while waiting for activation. As stated somewhere in the forums, an invalid email address is a sure ticket to having your account deleted.

Price. Rubber specifically. For the beginning flyer, DON'T SWEAT A RUBBER STRIPPER

of course i dont advise anybody to get a rubber stripper right off the bat. it's totally unnecessary...which is why i put it after "things that might help"
i never had a rubber stripper until nationals myself, heck i didnt have a torque meter until state. this was essentially my first and last year doing wright stuff, and the extra equipment helps, but is definitely not needed to win locals or place in state.

andrewwski wrote:

carneyf1d wrote:this post goes out to some of the more experienced fliers...
i use wing tips on my stab for most of my planes, when weight isnt a major issue...but do you guys angle only the wingtips for the turn and have a straight stab relative to the fuse, or make straight wingtips and turn the whole stab. ive almost always seen the whole stab turned, but i was just wondering if the alternative might be better.

Don't quite understand what you're saying...

I have angled wingtips, obviously. The plane wouldn't be stable without them. I offset the wing so one side is longer than the other.

Two years I used stab tips on a stab that was perpendicular to the fuselage. Last year I took off the stab tips and added a high rudder that I did angle a bit. Usually I roll the entire stab a bit as well.

I don't think he's talking about dihedral, but rather how to make a plane turn. There are, in general, two methods for controlling turn:

• Setting the wing's angle relative to the horizontal stabilizer so they they are skewed, causing the plane to roll. This works because the lift vectors are directly perpendicular to the surfaces that generate them. So, since the wing and stab are slanting in opposite directions, their lift vectors have components in opposite directions. Since they are on opposite ends of the fuselage, this causes the plane to turn.
• Turning the rudder/vertical stabilizer so that the entire plane yaws. The plane is now moving forward, but pointing slightly to the side. One tip of the wing is now pointing more forwards than it was before. Because of dihedral, this causes that end of the wing to rise, and thus causing the plane to roll. This is known as slipping and sliding because the plane is never pointed in the same direction that it is traveling in, so it is always skidding a little.

I believe there is actually so debate on which is better. I don't know. However, I have been using rolled motorsticks and tailbooms for the last three years. I always used the first method because the boom plugs into the stick, so I can adjust the angle between wing and stab just by unplugging, turning, and replugging. With a solid boom, you can just lick the boom, twist, and hold until it dries.

I will add this to the Wright Stuff Wiki unless somebody tells me that it's wrong.

thanks gh. yea i've incorporated both methods into most of my models, twisting the stab and offsetting the angle so it banks a bit. i think im gonna make some identical models and try both methods. then see which makes the better time.
by the way, ive already made a plane for next years draft rules. it's a canard, which i think will let me get away with making a massive wing with the limited stab. however im kinda experimenting in the canard area...ive only made one in the past. anybody here who can help me out? i remember the kid from alaska flew an awesome one at nationals...mind giving me some tips?

Could someone add a section about canards to the Wright Stuff Wiki?

If formatting is the problem, there are plenty of people who can fix it if the content is there.

I suppose i could update the wiki for canards. (i could update the robot wiki too if anyone is interested) I have had some success with them. Although things totally fell apart for me this year at nationals (it was really bad/embarrassing) I would not recommend making canards unless you are trying to win nationals and are willing to risk quite a bit. Canards are much more risky than other planes in my opinion and if i could go back in time to about December i would have not built a canard. I believe that there is no canard bonus this year after looking at the draft rules earlier.

WSM, how did you do in WS at nats?

I did very badly in WS this year at nationals (considering that I won the year before). I think my official time was something like 7 seconds. Going into nationals i decided to take a risk by flying a canard, because i figured that if i did not do it someone else would and they would beat me with it (i was wrong, there were no other good canards) I knew it was a little risky but I always had a normal plane as backup that I figured i could do ok with. The day before we got 6 hours to trim so i went and was making progress getting things dialed in. I had about three flights in the 2:40 range but i was not happy with that because I saw some normal planes get in the 3:40 range. My plane was very delicate and I ended up breaking the prop among other things and after that I could not get it to preform above 2 mins. The next morning i brought a normal plane to fly and struggled to get it trimmed in the 2 hours I had but i finally managed to get it somewhat trimmed but it liked to hit the ceiling alot so i just figured that as long as i used thinner rubber in the afternoon and was really conservative on the first flight i would be ok. I pulled it out of the box for my official flight and it went straight down. I still do not know what happened because i glued my trim settings and nothing appeared to be broken. It was really depressing on a whole because i had spent so much time on the event this year and it ended up being my worst event. Times were alot lower than i expected them to be at nationals. I think part of it was because of the supper high temperatures and humidity which really decreased flight time. For example at my school which was 24 feet high (but much cooler and less humid) my best times this year were 3:25 for a canard and 4mins for a normal plane no touch and 3:35 for a canard bouncing and 4:30 bouncing for a normal plane.
In retrospect i should not have spent any time messing with canards because even after working with them for the second half of the season i was still not comfortable enough with them to fix my plane when things went wrong. I am not saying that i could have won easily or anything but I think that I definitely could have done much better than i did. I really had wanted to win two events this year instead of just one. Perhaps i can redeem myself this year by coaching the local middle school that always goes to nationals.
Sorry for the long post and congratulations to all the people that did well. It took alot to pull your plane out of the box for an official flight after not having flown it for hours and have it do well.