Bridi XLT

[Terry Terrenoire]

In th late 80s I built 4 XLTs. 3 from kits, and 1 from scratch as I was
building the 3rd for someone else.
Ignore the anhedral. As someone else responded, it just has the effect of
lowering the center of drag from the stab.
The wing dihedral is something else. Make sure that when you set the wing
top side down on a flat surface, that there is 3/4 inch of space under
the center section. If you follow the written directions you will build
it with a flat top surface. Look closely at the side view on the plans
however, and you will see that the tip rib is higher than the root rib by
about 3/4 of an inch.
I built the first one without this dihedral and it suffered severe
adverse roll when rudder was applied. 
After the first flight I had to cut into the top of the wing with a
crosscut saw, widen the slot enough to set the required dihedral, fill it
with epoxy, then refinish the center section. 
Once the dihedral was added the plane flew great, as did the following 3.
Another change I made, primarily for asthetics, was to make the fin built
up into an airfoil shape instead of the flat one that comes in the kit.
Not only did it look better, but I think it made the rudder more
effective andeasier to control.

Good luck with your XLT. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did mine!

Terry T.



On Thu, 17 Oct 2002 15:44:16 -0400 "Michael Ramsey"
<michaelr at flying-models.com> writes:
Working on a Bridi XLT; the stabilizer has anhedral, and the wing has
dihedral (with the wing upside down, there's about a 3/4 inch gap at the
center). Comparing the XLT with  Bridi Great Escape, the Great Escape has
a straight stabilizer, and a wing which has a top surface that is flat
(minimal dihedral).

Question #1: What are the characteristics of the straight vs. anhedral
stabilizer, and how does either apply to the amount of dihedral in the
wing?

Question #2: With the anhedral stabilizer (on the XLT), what kind of
mixing can be expected in point rolls and knife edge?

Thanks!

Michael...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.f3a.us/pipermail/nsrca-discussion/attachments/20021017/f3c1474a/attachment.html