Very pleased to announce that James Hammond, designer of the Vector III and Minivec, has been kind enough to write up an article about his philosophy and approach to designing gliders for slope aerobatics. It’s a quite cool look inside a designer’s head, not to be missed! Read it here: Slope aerobatics and other aerial gyrations
X-Centric I slope soarer from Cliff Hanger on Vimeo.
The irrepressible Cliff Hanger’s very interesting “X-Centric” homebrew testbed, designed to see what influence some large supplemental fins could have for knife edge performance. It’s an idea that many have had, but which few have tested!! Read more in Cliff’s build thread on RCGroups.
By Ian Cole
Posted June, 2008.
The following letter is in response to a review by ‘Flyonline’ and ‘Surfimp’ of Ian Cole’s work on slope soaring aerobatics. But first a bit of trivia: Aussies (Australians) can spell but there are at least three types of variations in spelling used frequently in aircraft lingo that may differ from some countries. 1/ The word maneuver is spelt differently as in, manoeuvre. 2/ The letter ‘z’ is often replaced with the letter ‘s’ toward the end of words such as organi(s)e and exerci(s)e. 3/ We use two of the letters ‘l’ toward the end of words such as model(l)er or travel(l)er. Don’t blame me, I didn’t make the rules. J)
Thierry Platon (of TP42 / TP29 fame) has made his airfoils available for download and use on Pierre Rondel’s Planet-Soaring website.
Benoit Paysant-Le Roux, aka BPLR, one of the world’s greatest R/C pilots and progenitor of the Madslide 3D glider, was kind enough to respond to an email inquiry I sent him concerning how to successfully pull off the “flip loops” shown in his awesome King Madslide video.
The below comes from a private message exchange I held with Steve (aka “Flyonline” on RCGroups) from New Zealand. He was able to tease out a pretty good bit of my current thinking on the subject of slope aerobatics. I hope this helps elaborate further where I’m coming from in terms of my understanding of the subject, and what motivates me to publish this website. Enjoy! 
Or: “There’s more than one way to spin a cat”
On the slope and at the airport there is often discussion over what constitutes a ‘snap roll’ and the technique to get an airplane or glider to enter one. There are two common ways of snapping, both using in-spin rudder and up elevator (consider an upright, or inside, snap for now). The difference is in the direction of applied aileron, whether it’s in-spin or out-spin (i.e. cross-controlled). It’s not unusual to hear debate over which one is ““better”, so let’s look at the effects of each. (note: the real answer is “use the one that works the best for your airplane.”)
4 axis flying is, to the best of this writer’s knowledge, another French contribution to the radio controlled soaring world. Most pilots are familiar with the more common 2 and 3 axis concepts, in which the elevator, ailerons and rudder (for 3 axis planes) provide pitch, roll and yaw control of the aircraft. In 4 axis flying, the additional axis of control comes from the use of dynamically controlled flaps or flaperons that allow the pilot to instantly deploy a variable degree of camber or reflex.