I finally got some good in flight pictures of my last design effort. Fiberglass fuselage with balsa skinned foam surfaces. Finish is all paint. No CAD programs used, designed all old school. Pencil and paper right down to the airfoils.

I have always had a fondness for biplanes, that being probably the most significant reason for going that route. That being said, things I am finding out as I get more flight time on the Divergent is that overall the drag is not that much higher then on a monoplane pattern airplane. The wings of the Divergent at the root are only 1 1/8" thick so they are quite thin. I have found that I get the benifit of more wing area without it getting floaty. This is most likely due to setting the bottom wing at +1 degree and the top wing at zero. The theory is that in level flight the bottom wing does most of the work, when attitude is changed the top wing area kicks in. The biggest difference I have noticed is the effective rudder power. With 15 degrees deflection I can easily do knife edge loops and figure eights. It is more work getting it trimmed however. For example, I found the rudder trim changing from half power and below. After several hours of measuring to verify the fuse was straight, stabs level etc. I simply set up a throttle to rudder mix that fixed the issue. I feel much better after learning that in the instructions on another pattern Biplane addresses this phenomenon and has the owner set up the same mix as mine.

Yes, I have in the past been an avid pylon guy and you most likely have seen my Macchi 202 warbird pylon design. I stepped away from pylon a year ago to have the time to persue this project.