Here's how I do them. Right or wrong?
[video=youtube;ZnnJKkMSfHQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnnJKkMSfHQ[/video]
A few problems I see with that one:
- Always enter perfectly vertically, or since you will be giving some down elevator to enter the maneuver, a hair past vertical (slightly on its canopy). Since this maneuver plays off momentum for the rotation, you need all of that momentum going straight up if you want the rotation to be flat. The key to entering vertically is to start with your wings perfectly level...then, provided you aren't pulling too hard, all you have to do is time the duration of your pull correctly.
- You need to do maybe a quarter roll to achieve full roll inertia. Every millisecond you spend flying vertically bleeds off airspeed, and aileron movement bleeds off airspeed in a huge way due to drag....sometime, try a vertical dive with no power, and then try a vertical dive with the ailerons fully deflected with no power. The speed difference is huge.
- This is the big thing IMO...modern 3D planes, and Edges in particular, don't snap, blender, or pop-top as well when you give full elevator
and full aileron. The tail tucks under and the thing kind of does a weird shoulder snap that looks like you did not give it enough rudder. This is because our modern 3D planes are designed
not to tip-stall with a lot of pitch input...if they were, harriers would wing rock a lot more. Try a snap with an Edge sometime that involves no elevator at all, just full aileron and full rudder. You will get a much cleaner snap. Since a pop-top uses the momentum of a snap to generate the rotation, you need a clean, high-energy snapping behavior to start it. So, try this when you enter:
Give full aileron. As soon as the right stick achieves full aileron (like, as soon as it touches the stop of the gimbal), give full rudder and simultaneously release most of the aileron and give full down elevator while chopping the throttle. It should pop into a flat spin; at this point go to neutral elevator and full opposite aileron (aileron opposite of what you entered with). So, your right stick should trace more of a triangle than a square...instead of moving the stick from 3:00 to 1:30, move it from 3:00 to 12:30.
Still it looks good as is, but with a better technique you can get some more rotation and more consistency.