> What design features of a plane predispose it to tip stalls? You can't stop the wing from stalling in a steep turn, what you try to do to mitigate the result is to get the inboard part of the wing to stall first.
Built-up planes use "wash-out" to do this -- adding a bit of twist to the wing tips to reduce the angle of attack of the tips. Composite planes use airfoil blending, one foil section at the root transitions to a different foil at the tip. > What set-up factors of a plane can be used to minimize tip stalling? It depends on the plane. If you've got a built-up poly then your only option is washout. If you've got an aileron model then tweaking the differential movement of the ailerons may help. A lot of 'down' travel on an aileron can stall the wing, especially if the wing section is short (i.e. at the tip) so its common practise to program the radio or adjust the linkage so that you get twice or more up travel than down. > What flying factors can be used to minimize tip stalling tendencies? You're flying too slowly in too tight a turn. Practise flying the plane in smooth circles while keeping the nose level. (This isn't intuitive, its one of those skills that have to be learned and continually practised.) Check that you haven't got your elevator too sensitive -- most 'factory' setups seem to call for much greater throws than are necessary which makes the elevator way too twitchy. (If you've got a radio that can be programmed with dual rates and exponential movement then use that.) Another trick is to slacken off the joystick detent, the mechanical stop that signals that the joystick is centered. The adjustment for this is usually inside the radio on the back of the joystick mechanism (the radio's manual should have instructions for finding and adjusting it). This detent makes fine elevator control difficult, in fact I'm sure that some people trim their plane so they have to hold the elevator slightly off center for it to fly level just to avoid it. If you are flying a poly you may find that once in a thermal you require not just 'no rudder' to stay in it but a bit of opposite rudder. Holding the rudder into the turn as you fly round is an invitation to tighten up the circle which will eventually result in the inner tip stalling, you losing height and maybe going into a spiral dive. Martin Usher ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, June 05, 2004 5:22 PM Subject: [RCSE] tip stalls RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
