Originally Posted by PaulV
Originally Posted by Grumpy2
Many years ago I used to fly model aircraft. I built and flew several spitfires but the closer to scale they were the more difficult they were to fly. That lovely wing was a dreadful design to control, it would tip stall for fun making it very difficult to land.

I foolishly accepted a commission to build an accurate scale model with about 8 feet wingspan. I built in 3 degrees of washout but it was still a handful. I could fly it but the ‘owner’ crashed it first time he tried to land it!

A thing of beauty in fast, straight and level flight though!

Funny things is the real Spit has a wing incidence that is less at the tips hence avoiding tip stalls - the roots stall first!.

I have a foamy Spitfire RC model that is a poor reproduction but with a geared Sp400 electric motor on 3 series LiPo cells goes very nicely indeed. Amazingly it has survived a while despite my flying skills!


Real ones have 2.5 degrees of washout but at scale sizes more is needed. The physics of flight aren’t scaled and the spitfire wing isn’t laminar flow so loads of lift gets lost at those pointy tips. Back in WW2 recon spitfires had clipped wings. You’ll probably find that like most models that fly well the design had been adapted significantly for scale. Back in the day I could get a wheel barrow and shovel to fly so anything is possible with a high enough thrust/weight ratio


2012 Plus 4 in Sport Green. Much comfier than the Plus 8!