What are "slats" for?

[Bythebookie2]

saw something coming out of the leading edge of a airliner I flew in a few month ago, they appeared to look like flaps. I heard these are called slats.

What exactly is this device for?

[Sail 'n Soar]

High lift at low speed. The keep the flow attached to the wing at high angles of attack. Used most often in combination with flaps, but if you look at the YB-35 and YB-47 pictures you will see permanently deployed slats near the wing tips, ailerons to keep the tips flying.

[Bythebookie2]

Has anyone used them in an rc aircraft?

[Sail 'n Soar]

I recall their having been used in modeling, but I don't recall the specific application.

[Ollie]

See:
http://www.frederickmodelaircraftclub.org/tales/tale_18.htm
As I recall Gene Foxworthy's model used leading edge slots to delay tip stall.

[Al M]

Ollie,

I guess you go back a while in this hobby. I haven't heard that name since Zaic's 1951-52 Model Aeronautic Year Book. The Short Wave was also in Model Airplane News in 1951.

[Ollie]

Yeah, my first attempt to design and build a model was about 1936. I can remember flying one of Jim Walker's AJ Hornets (an early ARF FF rubber model) about 1937 or 1938.

[vintage1]

I always thought that slats were there for Australian bush pilots to hang out their underwear to dry on, after an especially tricky landing forced them to wash them in the nearest billabong...

[Discharger]

Crikey and Struth! The secret 's out! How did you know that vintage1? Has this never happened in the green fields of East Anglia? C'mon now, own up!
And Ollie, 1936!! Well, crikey again. I'll bet you've chopped up a fair bit of balsa by now? When did you first use wireless for your models?