Flying Clown Not That Funny

My little Flying Clown will do wonderful inside maneuvers, but try outsides, and it doesn't do all that well. It kinda stalls around outside loops, and if not very high, it will hit the ground when doing consecutive loops. When I built it, I was careful to check all the incidendes, and have rechecked these. They seem very close as far as I can tell. I have tried a little bit of down thrust, which didn't seem to help. I wonder if this is maybe a flying characteristic of this model? Any ideas on how to improve this?

If the bellcrank is not in "neutral" when the elevator is level, you will have problems. Similarly, if your handle is not vertical with the elevator level, you won't get the same control up and down.

If you prefer to hold your hand slightly in the down position, get a handle that will allow you to adjust the position of the line attachment relative to the angle you like to hold the handle. The lines must go out perpendicular to a line through the holding points.

Larry,

I fly with my handle in the vertical position, and I am quite sure the bellcrank is in neutral when my handle is neutral. I will double check this! I have experimented with moving the down line position on my handle, to give more or less down elevator travel. It still does the same in outside loops.

Jim Hoffman flew one in the SW Regionals last year and scored over 250+ in OTS with it. He had an OS 15 (FP I think) on his and it flew pretty well. It is no Barnstormer or Jamison, but it is capable of the OTS pattern so I'm guessing it is something with your particular airplane. Of course, Jim could probably score 250 in OTS with a brick.
Steve
The older I get, the better I used to fly!

Is your engine aligned with the wing? I had a similar problem with my Banshee. It was traced down to the engine mounted pointing up. Realigning the engine fixed the problem.

Steven,
The thrust appears to be neutral at this time, but I suspect you have something here. I have attempted to give it a bit on downthrust using the play in the mounting screws, but I am going to have to do some reaming to move it very much. This will probably be the solution to my problem.

Forgive me if this is a silly question but:

How fast is the plane flying? Lap time, line length?

And are you experienced with other planes flying this pattern or is this your first attempt with the (OTS) Pattern?

I have seen cases where the nerves of doing outsides create a tightening of the manuever to the point of a stall.

53 ft. lines, I don't know what the lap times are, although I don't fly competition, I do have a lot of flying experiance. I will admit that outsides are more nerve racking than insides

Outsides are there for a purpose. They keep us awake and help us trim rudders!