Makin' 'em Snap!!!!! (foamies)

[Matchless]

For the Unlimited sequence of the FGFIIC there are a bunch of snaps included in the Aresti. These have given me fits everytime I've practiced. Even Though Wayne has commented that we don't need to worry about the snaps so much and should focus on the rest of the routine more, I still want to make my snaps look more 'snappish' than not.

I asked Wayne and a few others about making foamies snap, and one of the comments I got was that you have to strike a balance on airframe weight/wingloading between light enough to fly the schedule cleanly, while also being able to make the snaps look like snaps. On my own personal airframes, I built them soooo light that they simply flew through the control inputs of the snap. There was no 'snap' at all, just a sloppy loop with a little roll/yaw to it..........

After getting that advice and watching a video of Wayne's that shows his Sobre snapping rather nicely, I went through all my vids of previous foamies I've designed looking for good looking snap rolls.... After finding all of them, I thought about what each of those airframes had in common and came up with a couple commonalities..... Just like was suggested above, I found that all of those good snapping foamies had a slightly higher wingloading than my norm. I also noticed that they all had either very effective ailerons, or very high throws on the ailerons.

With all that in mind, I decided to modify my Indoor IMAC Yak and see what it would do....... First off, I made a new offset servo horn for the ailerons which gives about 20% more throw. That helped but did not get it there.... Then I added some weight to the airplane - I hate dead weight, so I re-powered it with an Axi 2203-46 (and put my Mighty Midget back on my F3P comp plane). This brought my all up weight by around 7-8%. I tried snapping with this gear while carrying a little more momentum into the snaps (especially the upline snap). With this setup, I'm getting significantly looking better snaps. Granted, they still look like a foamy attempting to snap rather than a well flown Carden or Dalton snapping, but they look more like snaps to me now and the heading coming out of them is closer to the correct line than before. Interestingly enough, It does a better looking negative snap than positive.........

So it seems like the keys are: more aileron throw, more power/weight, more momentum on upline.

I hope that maybe this will help someone else get a better looking snap out of their foamy.

[Road Builder]

Mine usually snap really good.........when they hit the ground LOL. Keep testing it, sounds like you're on to something here.

Jay

[Donatas]

Matchless good thinking, i also have same worries , finally i get huge gym to fly, but now i see even now it is to small for unlimited seq with planes i use, i will have to build special plane for it, already now i see Sypher will not handle this sequence in place where i fly.

I flew sequence with Futurion but its freestyle plane and it not so stable in straight lines so some parts looks shaky, but snaps looks pretty good. Yesterday i try to fly sequence with Future (my f3p plane), and straight lines, and integrated rolls are much better now, but snaps don't look like snaps at all, as you say sloppy loop.

So i need to build hybrid for this type of flying, mid size, with long fuselage but short wings and big ailerons , that way i hope to keep stability in straight lines, but also have good snapping characteristics.

One last maneuver i have problems with is last 3/4 negative SR, maybe someone have some suggestions how to make it right?

Also will see how different weight make influence on snap rolls. By the way my planes also make better negative SR.

[TheTank]

I am going to fly through the sequences today and see what happens, and really work on trying to get my foamies to "snap" as well as a foamy can anway, hopefully be able to shoot some video in the arena.

[babflyer]

I know this isn't proper but my foamies appear to do a better snap when I only use aileron and rudder, I leave out the elevator. I suppose one could program out most all of their elevator in snap mode so they could still show some pitch for contest foamy flying.

[Tor]

Looking forward to the video, John - I can't get decend snaps with my foamys at all.

Tried with different rates, and low rates seems to provide the worst results. Any hints on what kind of throws to use?

[Matchless]

bab, dump the switch and try to fly the airplane through the maneuver to find the right amount of elevator. I don't think a mix switch can make a good foamy snap because there seems to be too much need for timing each input correctly...

Tor, on my Foamy, I'm putting in as much aileron as possible, medium input on rudder and medium to low on elevator. Those are really poor descriptions as you'll obviously have to find out how much your particular setup needs. However, the high aileron throw seems to be pretty necessary to duplicate a snap... then again, I may just be full of it... LOL

[hillmanr2]

I set up a condition for snaps on someone elses advice and it seems to work
elev 45%
rudder 50%
Ailerons 125%