We've had a few requests to discuss our inverted snap roll take off. It looks scarey as hell, but it's really not once you know a few of the secrets to pull it off safely. If you do it right, it's not even a high risk maneuver, but it does get a lot of attention.
It's nothing more than take off, roll to inverted, and 1.5 outside snap roll to level, and fly off. You're combining three simple, basic maneuvers, but the difficulty is stringing them together and getting the timing right. You can see already that you're going to be busy, but I've probably made it sound harder than it really is.
The first thing you're going to need is be comfortable rolling inverted low to the ground. Most 3D pilots don't have much trouble with that, though.
Then you need to work your outside 1.5 snaps.This involves flying in inverted, and then pitching the nose up with full down elevator, full ailerons, and full oposite rudder. I use right ailerons and left rudder, simply because I have always done it that way. You can just as easilly use left aileron/right rudder.
I like to do my inverted snaps at medium speed with the throttle cut, and then apply about half throttle or so as I go into the snap. This lets the power pull the plane through, and it also gives you a blast of vectored thrust. On the take off snap, though, you'll be using full throttle the whole time.
Of course, in the beginning practise these with a bit of altitude until you are comfortable with the stick sequence. You'll also want to play with the power some and get the timing right.
Speaking of timing, that's the biggest thing to get right in almost any of these maneuvers. Get the timing right and these maneuvers come off beautifully. Get it wrong and it can be disaster.
That's why I suggest trying them up high until you have the timing perfect and can stop the plane where you want it. It's no good not knowing when the snap is going to stop if you are low to the ground. You need to stop it right where you want it stopped so you can fly the plane out. I've got a little trick that makes this much more forgiving. We'll go over that a bit later because but I don't want to get ahead of ourselves.
You want to work on flying inverted and doing a 1.5 outside snap with the wings stopping at level. Once you can consistantly hit this cleanly, then you're almost ready.
Here's the big secret to the inverted snap roll takeoff: You take off, roll to inverted and begin the maneuver with the nose up pointing just a little. The first few times we are going to point the nose way up, and then we're going to work our way down. By pitching up a bit, the plane is going to continue climbing just a bit. With this in mind, any maneuver that goes upward is going away from the ground, and is really pretty safe. The longer the maneuver goes, the larger your margin of error. At least if you screw up you aren't out of control with the plane heading down!
So, if your timing is off, or you stop the plane at an odd angle, the plane is climbing. You just level the wings and fly out.
So, first you take off and roll the plane to inverted as low to the ground as you dare (don't try it low the first few times). The first few tries, pause for about a half second just to stabilize yourself. Then pitch the nose just that little bit so the plane is now climbing, and dump it into that perfect 1.5 outside snap you've developed. You want the plane to come out of the snap with the wings level, and then you just fly away.
I suggest the first few times you pitch up on about a 45 degree angle. This way the plane will have a little altitude if you stop the snap with the plane in a bad position. After you are comfortable doing these, you can lower the angle and the altitude. You simply have to make the maneuver work, and get the timing right before you can try it on the deck. After that, detirmine how close you cut it by how confident you feel doing the maneuver.
Now, even when I do these as low as I dare, I still pitch that nose up a few degrees. I try to hit where the angle is so little it is hard for onlookers to notice it. It's a slight of stick kind of thing.
Once you get comfortable, work on reducing the time between pitching the nose up and snapping the plane. I'm working on making it a smooth transition from half roll to snap, but if you hit it wrong with the wings not level, it's going to go off to the side. You'll see in the first takoff on the video I try to snap too soon, before the wings are quite level, and the plane wallows off to the left side. Still, it wasn't a disaster because I pitched the nose up enough that the plane climbed through the whole thing.
So, that's it. Mostly it's just stringing the three moves together, making sure you are pitched up a little before the snap, and then making sure the wings are level when you initiate the snap. Oh, it's also nice if you stop the snap with the wings level because the plane just flies away.
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