Aerobatics, model aircraft aerobatics.

Moving on to rolls, there are a number of variations.

Axial roll This is a roll in it's purest sense. What we are aiming for with one of these is getting a latteral rolling movement around the longitudinal axis of the model (line drawn from middle of spinner at front to back of fuselarge) with as little other movement as possible. Unless the plane you are flying is a special aerobatic machine a perfect or near perfect axial roll is very difficult to fly. A well set up purpose designed aerobatic model plane will do one of these just by applying aileron, where a trainer or scale model will need constant mixing of elevator and rudder to keep the nose level and the aircraft heading straight.

Barrel roll With most aircraft this is the roll that actually happens when you try to perform the above axial roll. It consists of both rolling and pitching with some yawing mixed in as well. To enter one of these manouvers with for instance your average trainer, first get lined up into wind and pitch the model's nose up a few degrees then apply a healthy amount of aileron. The model will now be rolling in the direction you asked of it while the nose will be gradually dropping. As the aircraft turns through the inverted point the plane's attitude should be level with the ground with the nose still dropping, don't push forward for this manouver let it drop. As the roll develops past the 3/4 point start feeding in some up elevator so that as the aircraft finishes the roll the nose is once again level. To make the barrelling more pronounced add up elevator throughout the manouver.

Snap Roll This is a stalled manouver and can create a violent gyration. To enter one of these apply full up elevator and full rudder at the same time. A fast snap roll will result in the direction of rudder. Some planes will roll a number of times in under a second. Beware this manouver can pull the wings of an aircraft it's that violent. Adding aileron at the right time can increase the roll rate even further with some planes.

Multi point roll This is the manouver where the plane rolls a few degrees, stops, then rolls some more, stops, rolls again....you get the idea. Quite demanding with your average plane, for instance with a four point role after the first 90 degrees the aircraft has to be held momentarily in knife-edge flight. After the next 90 degrees it's a relatively easy inverted, then 90 degrees further on your knife-edge again the opposite way.
The likes of competition aces like Hanno Pretner can fly near perfect 16 and more point rolls.