The Flick Roll - How do YOU do yours?

[Andy Mc]

We had a discussion at the field the other day about the correct way to do a flick roll or snap roll.

The were several thoughts on the matter, so I was wondering....

Is there a "trusted" combination in moving the sticks?

Is there a right or wrong way to flick?

Edited By Andy Mc on 22/06/2013 20:24:45

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

Full up elevator (or down for a negative flick) and full rudder deflection does it for me - but I think I usually bang in full aileron as well which may be wrong for the purists.

[Tom Sharp]

It's dead easy, do as Matin says, the skill is stopping the plane doing one and a half rolls.

[Turbycat]

I bang in some aileron too. Usually I find myself going too far!!. Just building up to putting one in at the top of a loop with my Pitts at the moment. Is that an avalanche?

Andy.

[Peter Jenkins]

Martin, from the photos I've seen taken in cockpit for full size aeros, the ailerons get used as well as the stick gets rammed into either top or bottom left/right corners. I find that sticks in the corner, apart from the throttle that is, works for me. My Wot4 flicks so fast it's difficult to stop it for one flick. Two flicks are easier. My F3A machine is much easier to stop as it resumes normal flight almost as soon as I return the sticks to their normal position so it's quite easy to do 1/2 a flick even.

[Andy Mc]

So assuming all three axis are used, elevator, aileron and rudder...

Do the aileron and rudder go the same way (eg. both sticks to the right (assuming mode 2)) ?

Or is it right aileron with left rudder or vice versa?

Edited By Andy Mc on 23/06/2013 00:21:06

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

Mine go the same way - but I think I can see where this discussion is going though as opposite aileron might, in theory, give an instantaneous kick in the flick direction due to the extra drag from the downgoing aileron and increased tendency to tip stall.

My (empirical) feeling is that if the controls are applied at the same instant, the overall tendency would be for the ailerons to contribute to the flick in the conventional sense as the roll would have started before the AoA reached the stall.

Perhaps this is something best put to the test next time I'm at the field?

Or have any of our contributors already experimented?

Edited By Martin Harris on 23/06/2013 01:23:38

[Speedster]

I use rudder and ailerons in same direction for the ninja star.

Cheers

S

[GrumpyGnome]

I just wack the Ailerorn/Elevator stick into a corner.................. any will do

Must try it with rudder when I next fly.

GG

[Peter Miller]

Full elevator, full right (or left) rudder and aileron. Easy.

But for my favourite manoeuvre, the avalanche you do it at the top of the loop.

Technically it should be a negative flick at the top of a loop but I do a positive one.

Getting the timing right so that the loop continues on the same line can be tricky but when you get it right it is so satisfying.

[Bob Cotsford]

It depends on the model whether aileron is needed or not, the little Akrostar is hard enough to stop in anywhere near the desired plane just using rudder, but the Altair needs aileron to overcome it's inertia and get a decent rotational speed.

[will -0]

Well flick rolls start with full rudder and full elevator, but if I want a different tumble they may also get aileron in either direction and full throttle. Sometimes they then drop into a spin which sometimes gets a bit slow to get out of even with full spin recovery inputs, but ususally it recovers in time!

Sometimes it's just a roll, sometimes it's an end-over-end, sometimes it's a cartwheel.

[Braddock, VC]

When I was learning to fly I quite often performed this maneouvre involuntarily and almost always immediately after lift off.

Later on I had a Lazy Bee and this did the most violent flick rolls, not having ailerons it was full throttle and full up and full left rudder. Never failed to amuse me until the wing retaining bands failed....

Edited By Braddock, VC on 25/06/2013 11:15:45

[AVC]

The flick roll is a dinamic stall, so ailerons shouldn't be used. In theory, only elevator should be used, to trigger a lost of lift by breaking the laminar flow over the wing. The problem with many models is that the profil is too small to perform correctly ("scale effect" )and this inefficiency is compesated with speed (in general models' speed is not "scale" ), which means that the model has a lot more of kinetic energy and inertia than it should, hence we need to support with ailerons and / or rudder

Edited By Alejandro Valle Carrillo on 24/07/2013 12:44:13