<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><DIV>Competition breeds experimentation.</DIV>
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<DIV>Think back when Hanno Prettner showed up with an anhedral stab. Pretty soon most of the designs had it. I remember hearing people say that pattern planes would only fly well with anhedral stabs.</DIV>
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<DIV>Retracts. I made the comment at the '95 Nats that it no longer made sense to have retracts on pattern planes. One fellow NSRCA board member told me in no uncertain terms that fixed gear would completely screw up the "force arrangement" of a pattern plane. Looks like one of us was right.</DIV>
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<DIV>Airbrakes (another Hanno Prettner experiment). Next year, lots of planes had airbrakes.</DIV>
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<DIV>Variable CG. In-flight variable pitch props. In-flight mixture controls. Slow-roll buttons. Variable sweep wings. Winglets on the top of a fuselage. Side force generators (yes, tried many years ago in pattern - long before 3D ever existed).</DIV>
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<DIV>IMHO, simplicity wins most of the time.</DIV>
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<DIV>Bob R.</DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR>--- On <B>Sun, 8/23/09, Phil Spelt <I><chuenkan@comcast.net></I></B> wrote:<BR></DIV>
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<DIV id=yiv1863893657><FONT size=3>All just further proof that aerobatics competition breeds innovation! :-$<BR><BR></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></td></tr></table>