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Is lighter always better?

njswede

150cc
Joe,

I was flying with my dear friend AeroHeadTW yesterday and he's usually flying his 48" Edge on 3s. Yesterday he tried some of my 4s 2200mAh in it and it obviously made a big difference for the high energy stuff.

What he also noticed, which is a bit more interesting, is that he felt the harrier was more stable. That kind of goes against the conventional wisdom that the lighter the plane is, the better the 3D performance will be. We double-checked the CG and it was the same for both batteries within a couple of millimeters.

Is lighter always better or can a little bit more mass make the plane easier to fly, since the added inertia it slows things down a bit? What's your take on that?
 
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This is a great question. Simply said, I think there is a happy medium when it comes to airplane weight. I do think a plane can be too light, and they can obviously be too heavy. I don't like planes that are too light, they make it difficult to 3D imo. One major thing is wing rock. You get wing rock because a wing is going from stalled to unstalled and back to stalled..ect... A heavy plane is obviously going to have a higher stall speed which makes it easier to fully stall the wings.

Basically, I feel its easier to a put a plane through its paces if its got some mass to it. I hate to use this example but I can't stand the PA addiction, it is too light in my opinion. It's hard to get it into a harrier, and it wants to rock when it is in one. It doesn't have any mass to it, so it won't do any high energy maneuvers.
 
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