dirk gently wrote:Bill Gaylord wrote:It could be done, but it would reduce the strength of the molded canopy top, as the dihedral would force cutting away of center top area of the canopy that saddles the wing center. I cut away a small area for aileron servo clearance, but did not want to reduce the strength of the part. Of course the wing center design could be modified to essentially shave off the dihedral "v" protruding from the bottom, so as to not have to modify the canopy.
I think there is something I'm not getting here. Isn't the 172 meant to be a free flight model (that deanoaz is converting to RC)? As such, doesn't it have dihedral anyway? For rudder-elevator you still need less dihedral than for free flight (I imagine, I never flown FF other than cardboard gliders).
The C-172 box art shows the model being flown control line. It wouldn't matter to me if they claimed FF or not, it does not have much dihedral and I'm simply speaking from the standpoint of building and flying roughly 100 hand built, balsa r/c models. FF would be maintained with large, gentle circles. For r/c, it's better to be able to turn tighter, unless you have a 1 mile open field with no trees, and turn very gently. Per scale, the top surface of the wing is nearly flat, while there is a small amount of additonal dihedral created by the tapering former height, which amounts to very little. Simply put, built to plan this would not be a great rud/elev flyer. I've flown models with low dihedral and rud/elev control, which had to be flown very carefully to maintain control, with very gentle control inputs and large circling turns.
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