A wind tunnel test of an off-the-shelf scale model of the Edge 540 aerobatic aircraft shows substantial improvement of pitch and yaw authority upon application of propeller wash, without markedly changing the qualitative aerodynamic response. High thrust at low advance ratio linearizes the response of control surfaces (elevator, rudder; and to a lesser extent, ailerons) and delays stall. This offers potential for simplification of aerodynamic models for Unmanned Air Vehicles in maneuvering situations, in gust-response, and for unconventional vehicles transitioning from wingborne to rotor-borne flight. Calculation with the panel-method PMARC was surprisingly successful, at least at low angles of attack. On the other hand, a modern Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes computation (AVUS) was seen to underpredict both zero-lift drag and maximum lift coefficient, ironically suggesting that lower-order methods may be superior not only in implementation but in accuracy. Experimental uncertainty due to control surface hysteresis is a notable complication of using off-the-shelf hobby-airplanes as wind tunnel test articles. Nevertheless, systematic trends in control surface effectiveness with and without propwash were identified.
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