Personally I do NOT use the Horizontal FIN (HzF) since it serves no purpose and IMO looks better without And as always however small the benefit without is also less weight ... BET ya, y'all never paid the HzF a second thought ... The Vertical FIN is a different story, this I obviously use as would any of us This Poll allows users to change their mind, change their vote [shadow=Orange,left]w00d[/shadow]
I voted yes, but I agree with you that it has no function with my personal flying style. I use it because my helicopters use the horizontal fin as the top half of the clamp for the boom supports and I never bothered to find another solution.
I voted yes because it is important for FPV flying. Forward cyclic moves you, well, forward. But it also wants to put you in a dive. I like fast forward flight when FPV, gives you that "1968 in Veitnam" feeling when flying just above the tree tops at 50+ MPH I have wondered if there was any benefit to adding a variable pitch fin that was tied to the elevator servo that acted like the real thing on a Huey?
The horizontal fin on my Beam E4 is so small, and cutout besides that, that I doubt it would be any real benefit in forward flight. I wonder if people have played around with larger horizontal fins? Maybe the high speed forward flight guys?
In backwards or fast backwards flight the Horizontal FIN (HzF) will tend to push the tail down which makes learning backwards flight harder than it needs to be For "3D" flying it's a certainty the HzF is not necessary as the FIN will slow forward and backward flips which every 3D pilot finds undesirable. This is also why we see on just about every Heli sold has a "3D" helicopter use a "skeleton" style Horizontal and Vertical FIN or the pilot will at least remove the HzF Although it's a given teh airspeeds would be need to be very high for the "common" Horizontal FINS available theses days to be aerodynamically significant. So that pretty much leaves them there for aesthetics alone ... The only area or venue that still use the HzF is the F3C (RC Precision Flight) as the HzF is said "to help trim the helicopter for perfect zero swash, full collective-full speed flight in the aerobatics" Then ALL bets are off if using a Fly-barless or 3-Axis Gyro as any trim function or benefit of the HzF will become redundant as this will handled by the 3-Axis stabilization [shadow=Orange,left]w00d[/shadow]
