I've come to the realization that what I've been intuitively experiencing is a real phenomenon as opposed to my imagination, and not only that, but it's a fact that's been overlooked by RC modelers for a very long time.
I've been maintaining a light built flying wing, like a Stryker, is a perfectly good plane for a beginner. Conversely, the conventional "trainer" designs (that is, anything labeled as "trainer") are actually garbage.
Usually the first two counter-arguments are "you need to have dihedral or be high wing for [insert some vague notion of centering]". This is because most of these trainers at least have a high-wing design, and some also have a dihedral/polyhedral.
But a light Stryker seems to be pretty stable and has something similar to this [vague notion of centering] without being high-wing or having a dihedral. What's going on?
As it turns out, if you spend 5 minutes looking at "dihedral effect", you'll find that it affects the "sideslip" of a wing. And you'll find that many other factors affect this same thing...
... including wing sweep (backward).
So assuming similar wing loadings, which plane would you rather hand to a beginner? It's important that beginners actually get out and get stick time. Well, what grounds beginners more than anything else?
Wind.
What design presents more problems in wind? A plane with a dihedral in the wings and a big clunky fuselage hanging under it, along with a
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