Please see the V-Tails for Aeromodels recommendations for Yet Another Attempt to Explain Them the browser settings Watching the RCSE forum during November 1998 I felt, that the discussion on V-tails is not always governed by facts and knowledge, but feelings and sometimes even by irritation. I think, some theory of V-tails should be compiled and written down for aeromodellers such that we can answer most of the questions by ourselves. V- tails are almost never used with full scale airplanes but not all of the reasons for this are also valid for aeromodels. As a consequence V-tails are not treated appropriately in standard literature. This article contains well known and also some not so well known facts on V-tails and theoretical explanations for them; I don't claim anything to be "new". I also list some occasionally to be heard statements, which are simply not true. If something is wrong or missing: Please let me know (
[email protected]), or, if you think that this article is a valuable contribution to make V- tails clearer for aeromodellers. Introduction Almost always designing a V-tail means converting a standard tail into a V-tail; the reasons are clear: Calculations yield specifications of a standard tail or an existing model is really to be converted (the photo above documents the end of the 2nd life of this glider;-). The task is to find a V-tail, which behaves "exactly like its corresponding" standard- or T-tail - we will see, that this is not possible. We can design the V-tail to have the same behaviour in many respects, we might get some advantages, but we have to pay a price.