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STOL: Zenith CH 701/750/801 vs Just Highlander/Superstol

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aircraft

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Joined
Jul 17, 2013
Messages
55
Location
Fremont, CA/USA
Guess this would be the ultimate comparison, or duel, in the current art of STOL design.

The simplified question: which one is better?

Chris Heintz gave a detailed description in this article: Anatomy of a STOL Aircraft. Just aircraft's Troy Woodland gave some explanation of its automatically deployed slat, beefed-up landing gear and tailwheel in news release and interviews.

The differences:

(1) Configuration: Tricycle vs Taildragger.

(2) High lift design: fixed slat design + full span flaperon vs Automatically deployed slat + large 40 degree flap. In his article Chris Heintz cites the asymmetric deployment of the left and right slat and the resultant asymmetric lift and huge rolling moment as the reason against the use of automatically deployed slat. Troy woodland claims the deployment of slat does not change the lift noticeably. The retracted slat certainly helps to reduce the drag in cruise, although Chris Heintz claims a trailing edge upper deflection of the flap helps his design. Equally important as the value of CLmax is the AoA at CLmax. The slat increases AoA_CLmax significantly, makes it difficult to reach at takeoff and flaired landing. The very tall main gear of Superstol is to satisfy a high AoA_CLmax. Chris Heintz claims this angle is 30 degrees for his design. Such a high angle seems suspicious and CH series does not have an tail strike angle of 30 degrees to fully take adavantage of a 30 degree AoA_CLmax.

(3) Control at low speed: Zenith uses an all-moving rudder and inverted horizontal tail. I have no information on Superstol.

(4) Material: Al alloy for Zenith vs Steel tube for Just. The main consideration is weight saving here. Which material/construction is more efficient structurally?

(5) Landing gear: I think Just's Superstol beats Zenith on this decisively.

How would you compare these two?
 
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