Ultimate Bi-Plane
The Ultimate 10-300 — the Canadian-designed competition biplane built to beat the monoplanes — captured as a sport-scale RC aerobatic mount.
About
The Ultimate 10-300 is the work of Gordon Price, a Canadian aerobatic champion who took his Pitts Special heritage and set out to design a biplane that could compete with the monoplanes that dominated the upper levels of unlimited aerobatic competition by the mid-1980s. The 300 was the third step in a series of biplanes Price designed and kit-marketed for the homebuilt market — the progression went 10-100, 10-200, and finally the 10-300, which made its first flights in August 1987.
Square corners became the trademark of the Ultimate 10-300. Price gave the airplane the side-view silhouette of a monoplane to combat the anti-biplane bias he felt existed at world competition level — and the design backed up its appearance with numbers. Roll rates of 360 degrees per second, ailerons coupled to the elevators (so they doubled as flaps at extreme elevator deflection), and a layout that let the wings keep lifting at higher angles of attack — all aimed at one goal: making the biplane competitive with the new generation of unlimited monoplanes. In 1990 Price sold his Ultimate 10-300 design to airshow pilot Joann Osterud, cementing the type's place in the airshow circuit.
The Ultimate is one of the more popular biplane subjects in modern RC aerobatic flying. The square-cornered, monoplane-from-the-side silhouette appears in foam and balsa scale-aerobatic biplane kits across the modern RC market, and the proportions you see in many "scale aerobatic biplane" ARF and foamy kits sold today owe their lineage directly to Price's design.
In the simulator
The biplane character — short-coupled, deceptively maneuverable, with personality on the ground and in the air. The Ultimate Bi-Plane in our sim has the kind of aileron authority that punishes a heavy hand and rewards a precise one. Use it to learn the biplane-specific aerobatic vocabulary: tight loops, snap rolls, square corners, and stalled aerobatics that don't translate to a monoplane airframe. Pairs well with classic grass strips and golden-age-style flying-field landscapes. A natural step beyond the U-Can-Do in this same pack, and a different kind of challenge from the Edge 540 line — biplane handling at its best.
