"marginally stable' Cubs....What ?....'.Dutch roll ' What ? Nuh uh...not on any Cub of the fifty or so I've flown.....Sure the fin is small on a Cub ,but you fly with the combined fin/rudder area,attached to the end of a long moment arm.
You gotta retract that statement,if you're talking about a Piper Cub Factory J-3 Cub,37 to 65 Horsepower,high winged,yellow airplane. with a black lightning bolt on the side.
It doesn't want to do ANYTHING but fly straight and level ,properly trimmed.
Sorry,man.

Originally Posted by epoxyearl

"marginally stable' Cubs....What ?....'.Dutch roll ' What ? Nuh uh...not on any Cub of the fifty or so I've flown.....Sure the fin is small on a Cub ,but you fly with the combined fin/rudder area,attached to the end of a long moment arm.
You gotta retract that statement,if you're talking about a Piper Cub Factory J-3 Cub,37 to 65 Horsepower,high winged,yellow airplane. with a black lightning bolt on the side.
It doesn't want to do ANYTHING but fly straight and level ,properly trimmed.
Sorry,man.

I agree completely, the only time I have ever seen a cub dutch roll is when the pilot had a sh#t load of rudder throw and the pilot over corrected on takeoff

Originally Posted by NACA0012

Most of the ARF's I've seen would be poor actual scale competition subjects due to the significant dimensional mods that have been made to them so they'd actually fly without being evil bitches and generating customer complaints. ex. a true to scale Piper Cub has a rudder that is so small its marginally effective making the plane prone to dutch roll which would generate a lot of crashes for sunday flyers.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to learn how a Cub flies.

Scale contests have always seemed to involve some subjective judging and favoritism based on contestant's past wins, reputation and past contributions of contestants to the hobby/sport, friendships, etc., Model sizes and power systems ( IC vs Electric vs Turbine), single versus multi-engine, complexity/working features, and intangeables like mega-bucks invested seem to be factors. Best of show dog contests, figure skating, and musicianship and many other forms of competition have similar factors.

Some of the scale flyers seem to be low-timers or doing their maiden flights and entry flights at the same time. Sad to see a model that took years, money and ingenuity to build, crashed due to poor setup, inexperience/poor piloting technique and/or "stage fright".

That's why they included 'team' scale in contests, which I agree with...some incredible modelers cannot,or will not attempt to fly their creations..Some times a modeler with no 'investment' is a better choice to pilot those models.
I flew warbirds for Jim Riley a couple of years. His interest was building only..If someone hadn't flown for him,the models would have remained dormant.

Originally Posted by E-Challenged

Some of the scale flyers seem to be low-timers or doing their maiden flights and entry flights at the same time. Sad to see a model that took years, money and ingenuity to build, crashed due to poor setup, inexperience/poor piloting technique and/or "stage fright".

I think at this point I'd happily hand over the maiden flight of my serious scale modelers to a serious scale model pilot. But just like not everyone is able to build a precision scale WWI model, not just any "good pilot" is qualified to fly one. We've got a couple of "really good" flyers in my average "sunday flyer" club. But they don't fly scale WWI models. There's another guy who have flown (and reviewed) a couple of WWI electric ARFs, but that doesn't really qualify him to fly a serious scale model.

Add to this that I fly Mode 2 (American style) while all my Japanese club-mates...and most likely any truly experienced Japanese pilot I could talk into doing the maiden...would be using Mode 1.

So I feel like I'm stuck doing my own maidens. But I could do without the stress.

I'm a flier for 60 years.The secret to choosing a good test pilot is simple,really.
Find someone who can fly an airplane slowly....some one who doesn't 'blow' landings.
You need some one who will purposely stall an airplane early into a test flight,to learn the characteristics of that airplane's stall......most crashes occur at landing,when dealing with scale models,and landing is near a stall.
If he tests a multi-engine scale model,he must immediately throttle back,to stabilize the aircraft,if an engine-out occurs...again,low speed flight.
If you don't practice emergencies,you won't survive them..and you need some one who knows a heavy metal aircraft can fly out of ground effect into a stall on take off.....it just wasn't ready to fly yet.
Such people are difficult to find.

Earl is right. I've had the "best" pilot in my club, make a mistake doing the maiden on one of my models.

Unless I can find a pilot that has experience with the specific model that I need to maiden, I prefer to do the maiden myself. I can wreck one as easily as some one else, and I can only blame myself.

I have several hangar queens. I am emotionally attached to them, because I built them. I am reluctant to place them at risk. After a few years, the attachment weakens, and they eventually get air time.

If I flew more, the problem would most likely go away. I usually have a model on the building board. If the choice comes down to building versus flying, 90% of the time I'll choose building.

Building is what I enjoy most, in our hobby. That doesn't solve the flying problem, though.

I have recently built a few models that are easy to fly, and I have little emotional attachment to them. The idea is to fly the "hello" out of them, and to regain my flying skills.

Hopefully, this will eventually lead to less hangar queens, and more of my models in the air.

Beautiful queens !! I agree.. but it sure is sweet to see your pride and joy travelling around the field. I took a bit of damage to m cub not long ago due to pilot error after maybe 6 or 7 flights. But it was worth it to see her fly. She's on deck for repairs.

Last year (apparently for financial/legal reasons) our club decided to only allow flying on the weekend. So that's 104 days of flying, if I were to fly two days a week, every week. But there are at least 16 of those days a year that I'm out of town (or out of the country), so that brings it down to 88 possible days of flying. Of those days, given the multiple "rainy seasons" we seen here in Japan (including the typhoon season) I might realistically expect to be able to fly for about half of those days, so something like 44 flying days per year.

But, you know, sometimes I'm just lazy and sometimes I do other things (like go hiking in the mountains), so the truth is that I probably don't fly more than 20-30 days a year. At that rate, I'm never going to be an ace pilot...and frankly, I don't really care to be. I enjoy seeing the models up in the air, being out in the fresh air on a nice weekend, and having fun with the guys.

The intensity of my building is out of all proportion with my commitment and interest in flying. I wouldn't mind partnering with a committed WWI scale contest flier if someone like that were available here in Japan. But as Tom said, I know my models much better than anyone else does...and I can crash it just as well as anyone else!

Originally Posted by abufletcher

Last year (apparently for financial/legal reasons) our club decided to only allow flying on the weekend. So that's 104 days of flying, if I were to fly two days a week, every week. But there are at least 16 of those days a year that I'm out of town (or out of the country), so that brings it down to 88 possible days of flying. Of those days, given the multiple "rainy seasons" we seen here in Japan (including the typhoon season) I might realistically expect to be able to fly for about half of those days, so something like 44 flying days per year.

But, you know, sometimes I'm just lazy and sometimes I do other things (like go hiking in the mountains), so the truth is that I probably don't fly more than 20-30 days a year. At that rate, I'm never going to be an ace pilot...and frankly, I don't really care to be. I enjoy seeing the models up in the air, being out in the fresh air on a nice weekend, and having fun with the guys.

The intensity of my building is out of all proportion with my commitment and interest in flying. I wouldn't mind partnering with a committed WWI scale contest flier if someone like that were available here in Japan. But as Tom said, I know my models much better than anyone else does...and I can crash it just as well as anyone else!

start flying ultra micros. I know people look at the little things and immediatly think toys, but if you can grease landings on a 4 oz plane in a 5mph crosswind, you can do just about anything with the big boys. They are cheap and require little space. If it weren't for UM I wouldnt be half the pilot I am now. I maidened that cub I posted earlier. It was a beautiful day sunday when I did it. My micro flying made it so the cub felt like it gave me all day to react. stall, spins, hammerheads, all felt like it was slow motion. Granted she carries the spin longer than the UM's, but all in all the UM will help you gain skill and reaction time. give it a try.

Originally Posted by countilaw

So, it comes down to how much money one has, and not what a craftsman they are.

The true words of a "ARF" pilot. Sounds like, "I want the GLORY, I just don't want to work for it!"

Frank

Yeah that's pretty much what this country has come to. I am only going on 27 but I will tell you that I am not affraid of entering something I built with my own 2 hands into a contest. Even if some paint is smeared or some glue got on to something it shouldn't have. I really wish this country would go back to the way it used to be back in the early 1900's. All this damn technology has turned people lazy and inconsiderate. Sorry just my little rant.

Originally Posted by Wookster

start flying ultra micros. I know people look at the little things and immediatly think toys, but if you can grease landings on a 4 oz plane in a 5mph crosswind, you can do just about anything with the big boys. They are cheap and require little space. If it weren't for UM I wouldnt be half the pilot I am now. I maidened that cub I posted earlier. It was a beautiful day sunday when I did it. My micro flying made it so the cub felt like it gave me all day to react. stall, spins, hammerheads, all felt like it was slow motion. Granted she carries the spin longer than the UM's, but all in all the UM will help you gain skill and reaction time. give it a try.

I really really SHOULD have at least one UM. I mean not only do I live on a university campus and have a large grass field right in front of my house, but there's also an indoor gym that's almost always empty as as a prof, I can do almost whatever I want.

It's not that I think of the things as toys....it's that they seem so darn pricey for a bit of foam.

If you only get ONE day a year to fly,you can practice all the things that make a good pilot.
Full scale Pilots have to be recertified occasionally,to be on top of their game.
1 requirement is 3 takeoffs and full stop landings.....on your next flying day,do that to yourself.I notice at my field,guys will fly until 'conditions are right' for landing.
You aren't a pilot until you believe you're in full control of your airplane,which may require you to land in less than ideal conditions.
The same thing applies to models......when you're ready to fly,take off ,do a 90 deg.turn,go straight,do another 90 downwind.......90 onto base,then 90 onto final.OR,do you just kinda follow the airplane around until it gets where you want it to be?
If you can boss the airplane into 4 decent turns,you can fly to 1 good landing.
...... then do it two more times.

Originally Posted by Skeletor507

Yeah that's pretty much what this country has come to. I am only going on 27 but I will tell you that I am not affraid of entering something I built with my own 2 hands into a contest. Even if some paint is smeared or some glue got on to something it shouldn't have. I really wish this country would go back to the way it used to be back in the early 1900's. All this damn technology has turned people lazy and inconsiderate. Sorry just my little rant.

Kudos on your desire to enter a contest come hell or high water. Beyond that, technology isn't anywhere near the problem of attitudes. In your case, you would enter a contest even if your plane had paint smeared or such. That says a lot about you. I'm not a builder, lack the skill set, but an ARF basher. Rarely do I enter contest, because thats just me. If I do, I harbor no expectation of achieving a certain level of respect or even winning, unless I'm going up against planes like yours. Because to me, when I put a plane on the contest line, it will represent the very best I can do. Period. My work is my signature and a statement of who I am and my level of committment to my aircraft and the hobby. I'm not trying to rag on you, but seriously, why would you enter a plane in a contest with paint or glue smeared? Is that the best you can do? If something is hosed up, fix it. Why settle for 'good enough' just because it'll take a bit more time to get it right? "Its good enough" vs. 'its the best I can do' is something technology or going back to the 1900's can't fix.