slow day at the office...

Could a mono-line system be made to give precise enough control for a PA airplane?

I haven't flown a Mono-line plane, but Dale Kirn and his son Joe have demonstrated a Palmer T'Bird on Monoline. Those who seem to know about these things say that there is somewhat of a lag in control response because some of the line twist is lost in the "springiness" of the wire. It works fine for speed models because a 1/4 lap lag in control response is OK for those types. The wire and mechanism parts are still available from the Stanzel Co. in TX.

Vic Stanzel offered a $1000 prize to the first pilot to win Precision Aerobatics at the Nats using monoline. Dale Kirn has a 40+ year old Thunderbird with monoline and used to do a pretty good pattern, especially considering that he wasn't really a PA pilot - more interested in Scale, Speed and Proto Speed.

See: http://www.stanzelflyingmodels.com/homepage.htm

>Could a mono-line system be made to give precise enough
>control for a PA airplane?

Check out this thread from the archives:

http://www.clstunt.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=7046&forum=DCForumID1

Dale Kirn's article, "Single Line Stunting's a Cinch", is in the 1958 Air Trails Annual. Oddly enough, I am offering it on ebay right now.

In my opinon no, a complete set of reflexes-responces have to be
learned. When my flying partner and I were building mono line .60
speed airplanes, we also built 1 ea 1/2A & .35 Stanzel stunters,while they weren't all that hard to fly, they were a bear to fly well. Inverted was a real treat, as well as the sq8. But the .60 speed air-
plane was very easy.

Joe Kirn flew a very respectable Old Time Stunt pattern at the 2000 VSC with a monoline Jamison Special.

I'd like to know more details about the "torsion" control units...
Any help?