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Getting old! (No guts no glory!)

Design up some new super slick wings with speedy airfoils...take em by surprise, Konrad. If need be, mount a Xicoy x45 turbine for that extra boost of thrust...be the Dominic Torretto of F5a lol. Put the turbine on actuators so its all hid in the fuselage, flip a switch and it rises up, starts, and suddenly you doing 200 mph down the straights. Untouchable. Now thats flyin ;-)
 
I’m sorry to say that even now I’m not equipment limited! My high times are as a result of me not being able to navigate the pylons.:cry:
 
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We held our April 24th race. It was a wild one in that we were all playing the thermal lottery. From a plane perspective it was a bad day in that speeds were all over the place even in any given heat. I liked that it forced us pilots to read the air. It was a joy seeing the skill of the "old timers" reading the air and adjusting to the conditions.

This was the first race that I flew a Redshift for all the heats. I'm ecstatic to say that she gave me my first podium finish with a third. ( I won the most thermal lotteries). I was in second until the last round, and then Mike Retterer had a smoking run to earn a second and push me to third place finish.

The key was light weight. I was using the glass lay up Redshift, with no ballast. Now because of the wild variability in the air I was flipping switches a lot. I launched the thermal mode (TE down about 5mm) riding what lift I could find. I would flip the wing into reflex (TE up about 1.5mm) on the dive into the course. After turning base "B" flip the switch again into normal mode. Normally I don't like switch flipping during a heat as I don't have the brain band width to do this and fly the race. But I think the air demanded this.

Latter in the day I could have added a bit of ballast. But as the air was so unstable I didn't want to risk it, (sinking to the bottom of the valley). In those heats I left the TE in reflex.

What I learned in this race was that I probably was over ballasting in my earlier races. The Redshift has a smaller and dare I say more efficient wing than most other F3F racers. I need to learn to fly to the airframe strengths.

On the subject of airframes this Redshift still had the original V-Tail angle of a 104°. In the turbulent air I think I had some issues with stability in at least two heats. Base "B" was the bad base (difficult) to fly. If I flew base "B" like I flew base "A" (hard and level turn), the nose often popped up or went in a direction I didn't want. I found that I had to fly a wider dropping turn around base "B" to keep some speed and directional control. I think with more vertical area I could have flown through the turbulence with a lot less adjustment to my style. I didn't break out the Carbon Redshift with its modified V tail (99°) as it is 300 grams heavier than the glass Redshift. Extra weight is just what I think I didn't need with the air we had. I'm going to need to order some larger tail feathers for this glass lay up 104° Redshift.
 
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Konrad said:
We held our April 24th race. It was a wild one in that we were all playing the thermal lottery. From a plane perspective it was a bad day in that speeds were all over the place even in any given heat. I liked that it forced us pilots to read the air. It was a joy seeing the skill of the "old timers" reading the air and adjusting to the conditions.

This was the first race that I flew a Redshift for all the heats. I'm exstatic to say that she gave me my first podium finish with a third. ( I won the most thermal lotteries). I was in second until the last round, and then Mike Retterer had a smoking run to earn a second and push me to third place finish.

The key was light weight. I was using the glass lay up Redshift, with no ballast. Now because of the wild variability in the air I was flipping switches a lot. I launched the thermal mode (TE down about 5mm) riding what lift I could find. I would flip the wing into reflex (TE up about 1.5mm) on the dive into the course. After turning base "B" flip the switch again into normal mode. Normally I don't like switch flipping during a heat as I don't have the brain band width to this and fly the race. But I think the air demanded this.

Latter in the day I could have added a bit of ballast. But as the air was so unstable I didn't want to risk it, (sinking to the bottom of the valley). In those heats I left the TE in reflex.

What I learned in this race was that I probibly was over ballasting in my earlier races. The Redshift has a smaller and dare I say more efficent wing than most other F3F racers. I need to learn to fly to the airframe strengths.

On the subject of airframes this Redshift still had the original V-Tail angle of a 104°. In the turbulent air I think I had some issues with stability in at least two heats. Base "B" was the bad base (difficult) to fly. If I flew base "B" like I flew base "A" (hard and level turn), the nose often popped up or went in a direction I didn't want. I found that I had to fly a wider dropping turn around base "B" to keep some speed and directional control. I think with more vertical area I could have flown through the turbulance with a lot less adjustment to my style. I didn't break out the Carbon Redshift with its modified V tail (99°) as it is 300 grams heavier than the glass Redshift. Extra weight is just what I think I didn't need with the air we had. I'm going to need to order some larger tail feathers for this glass lay up 104° Redshift.
Click to expand...

" I think with more vertical area I could have flown through the turbulance with a lot less adjustment to my style."
"I'm going to need to order some larger tail feathers for this glass lay up 104° Redshift."

And so it came to pass.

Well done on the podium finish, Konrad - It must have been the ping!

Cheers,

Doc.
 
Doc James Hammond said:
" I think with more vertical area I could have flown through the turbulance with a lot less adjustment to my style."
"I'm going to need to order some larger tail feathers for this glass lay up 104° Redshift."

And so it came to pass.

Well done on the podium finish, Konrad - It must have been the ping!

Cheers,

Doc.
Click to expand...
He snuck a xicoy x45 into the fuse ;-)

Seriously though. Congrats Konrad.

("Thats a turbine exhaust"
"No its not, its a...a...air pressure vent, yeah...thats it, an air pressure vent"
"At the back of the aircraft? Whats the opening in the nose, then, the radiator?"
"Cooling air for the battery, what else would it be?"
"I dunno, the intake for the turbine maybe?")
 
T
Txmustangflyer said:
He snuck a xicoy x45 into the fuse ;-)

Seriously though. Congrats Konrad.

("Thats a turbine exhaust"
"No its not, its a...a...air pressure vent, yeah...thats it, an air pressure vent"
"At the back of the aircraft? Whats the opening in the nose, then, the radiator?"
"Cooling air for the battery, what else would it be?"
"I dunno, the intake for the turbine maybe?")
Click to expand...
That often is my modus operandi, putting ten pounds of mud in a five pound sack. Having spent most of my adult life with turbines trying to extract the most temperature (energy) differential across the turbine. Now in my more mature years I find harnessing the thermal energy between air mass much more challenging and rewarding.
 
Konrad said:
T

That often is my modus operandi, putting ten pounds of mud in a five pound sack. Having spent most of my adult life with turbines trying to extract the most temperature (energy) differential across the turbine. Now in my more mature years I find harnessing the thermal energy between air mass much more challenging and rewarding.
Click to expand...
Lol Konrad,

You could be the next JetCat.

Give rc its first, scale afturburning turbofan that can be used for longer than 20 seconds.

Just think..you could engine the first rc aircraft to break Mach :-) Why? Just because.
"I feel the need...the need...for speed."
Maverick and Goose, Top Gun.

How much thrust would it take to pish a scale F14 Tomcat at 1/7 scale, weight 50-ish pounds to Mach 1? Get Skymaster to do the airframe, full cf layup. Skins and all, no glass. Be a Guiness thing (No Doc, not the beer, the other Guiness)
 
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Its been done. Why stick with the 50’s tech afterburning concepts. In the 21st Century we think with the concept of super cruise.

Now the true rc speed demons are hitting the mach rise with gliders. This is where the rules about non-compressible fluids start to go out the window!
 
First I need to apologize to all participants for violating the safety line at Sunday’s race.

The day started off badly as I had left my wings for my 99° Redshift at home! So I was forced to fall back on my light weight 104° glass Redshift. But as the winds where real high at 9:00am I knew it wasn’t the ship I want to race. Now I had brought my untested 96° Redshift wings and all. So I performed its maiden flight. Made the adjustment this flight indicated. (I didn’t need to change much as I have a lot of experience with Redshifts). By the start of the racing the winds had dropped enough to make the light weight Redshift a viable tool to race with. Love the way the light Redshift flew. But by the 3 heat the winds where getting high and the turbulence was making it difficult to place the light weight ship where I wanted. I couldn’t figure out the ballast so moved to the new 96° Redshift.

Well I’m here to say that the new 96° V tail worked even better than the 99° and so much better than the 104°. With the new 96° Redshift I was doing rather well (for me). This is even more surprising as this was the second flight with this model. I guessed the programing changes as dictated by the maiden rather well. Now the wind and turbulence kept getting worse so I added ballast, again to good effect in subsequent heats.

Now the bad news! I ended up adding all the ballast I had, 620 grams. I knew something was off as the spacer block did not come into the loading window as it had earlier. I knew something was wrong but told myself it must have been some tolerance stack up issue with all the spacer. What had happened was that the rear ballast stop had cracked free and was moving aft down the ballast tube. You guessed it, with the strong arm of my launcher @Pinepig I had 620 grams of ballast shift aft 35mm to 40mm!

Wow, she was really responding fast to the elevator! I thought I has too much snap flap and was lowering it after each turn. (Mike Shellim’s templet allows this). At one turn the fast elevator resulted in a cut. So I bunted, and to make up time gave full race elevator out of a diving turn. Well, that drove the rear stop out of the ballast tube and the resulting very aft CofG causing the ship to rotate vertical. The Redshift shot straight up into the sun. There was nothing I could do but scream HEADS UP and watch in horror as the ship drifted over the safety line. At the top of the climb the nose flopped forward allowing some of the 620 grams of ballast to move forward. Much to my surprise I regained some control!

I called a mayday and turned into the landing zone. Much to my frustration I couldn’t get the nose down (I was still very tail heavy) and was pushed into the rear rotor that is the bane of all of us that fly the SLoT! The damage was moderate to heavy but at least I hadn’t hurt anybody!

@Doc James Hammond I have to say you have a magical wing there in the Redshift. It took some gross changes in the CofG to get her to actually let go Snap/Stall! As to elevator control with the 96° tail I saw no issues in the handling, ether in thermal flight of the test flight or the response at close to max FAI weight. I like how the Redshift tracked with the 96° tail no wiggle, well she was as good or better than the competition ! I’m thinking I can still move closer to the 90° tail, but fear getting into Horner’s 90° junction drag.
 
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Konrad said:
First I need to apologize to all participants for violating the safety line at Sunday’s race.

The day started off badly as I had left my wings for my 99° Redshift at home! So I was forced to fall back on my light weight 104° glass Redshift. But as the winds where real high at 9:00am I knew it wasn’t the ship I want to race. Now I had brought my untested 96° Redshift wings and all. So I performed its maiden flight. Made the adjustment this flight indicated. (I didn’t need to change much as I have a lot of experience with Redshifts). By the start of the racing the winds had dropped enough to make the light weight Redshift a viable tool race with. Love the way the light Redshift flew. But by the 3 heat the winds where getting high and the turbulence was making it difficult to place the light weight ship where I wanted. I couldn’t figure out the ballast so moved to the new 96° Redshift.

Well I’m here to say that the new 96° V tail worked even better than the 99° and so much better than the 104°. With the new 96° Redshift I was doing rather well (for me). This is even more surprising as this was the second flight with this model. I guessed the programing changes as dictated by the maiden rather well. Now the wind and turbulence kept getting worse so I added ballast, again to good effect in subsequent heats.

Now the bad news! I ended up adding all the ballast I had, 620 grams. I knew something was off as the spacer block did not come into the loading window as it had earlier. I knew something was wrong but told myself it must have been some tolerance stack up issue with all the spacer. What had happened was that the rear ballast stop had cracked free and was moving aft down the ballast tube. You guessed it, with the strong arm of my launcher @Pinepig I had 620 grams of ballast shift aft 35mm to 40mm!

Wow, she was really responding fast to the elevator! I thought I has too much snap flap and was lowering it after each turn. (Mike Shellim’s templet allows this). At one turn the fast elevator resulted in a cut. So I bunted, and to make up time gave full race elevator out of a diving turn. Well, that drove the rear stop out of the ballast tube and the resulting very aft CofG causing the ship to rotate vertical. The Redshift shot straight up into the sun. There was nothing I could do but scream HEADS UP and watch in horror as the ship drifted over the safety line. At the top of the climb the nose flopped forward allowing some of the 620 grams of ballast to move forward. Much to my surprise I regained some control!

I called a mayday at turned into the landing zone. Much to my frustration I couldn’t get the nose down (I was still very tail heavy) and was pushed into the rear rotor that is the bane of all of us that fly the SLoT! The damage was moderate to heavy but at least I hadn’t hurt anybody!

@Doc James Hammond I have to say you have a magical wing there in the Redshift. It took some gross changes in the CofG to get her to actually let go Snap/Stall! As to elevator control with the 96° tail I saw no issues in the handling, ether in thermal flight of the test flight or the response at close to max FAI weight. I like how the Redshift tracked with the 96° tail no wiggle, well she was as good or better than the competition ! I’m thinking I can still move closer to the 90° tail, but fear getting into Horner’s 90° junction drag.
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear you had a mishap, Konrad.

Good to hear that the new tail angle seems to have been so thoroughly tested and seems to be working.
Now I'm beginning to think that I could have been about right on the actual tail area, just wrong on the angle - which, as I have said before, is not something that figured largely in the initial calculations for this airframe. (Duh!) As usual, with hindsight we now know much more, so thanks for that.
In any case we do have the stuff machined up for a larger tail so I suppose it will be quite interesting to test that against the orginal version.

As you know, the Redshift wing was the last development of my ***"Lift only where its needed/reverse ellipse" theory until the Alpenbrise, which probaby - due to its longer 4M span and higher aspect ratio - about 22:1, works even better - but wouldn't be quite so practical for F3f.

What is quite interesting is that these things: Wing planform profile, Aerofoil sections, Lift distrbution, and Wing tips shape were all developed individually then combined to compliment each other to make a generally efficient planform.

I do see that recently some of the newer F3f models seem to be following some of it, (except the tips) but I wonder what would happen if you asked any of them WHY they did it.

I'll give a general update on where we are with production and development in the "Aeroic" thread, as its about time

Cheers, and thanks again for the input.

***"Lift only where its needed/reverse ellipse"is too laborious. From now I'm going to call it "Hammond Optimized Lift Theory" or HOLT for short.

Doc.
 
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Looking back at it Konrad IIRC the first time I launched your plane it felt like I had pulled the nose cone off slightly, I'd bet that it was actually the rear of the ballast compartment letting go that I felt.

You did a nice job of not giving up on that landing/recovery. I used to tell my fullsized students all the time, you don't quit flying that airplane best you can till you're down or dead.
 
Thanks!

Yep, I fly my crashes all the way down. After all I’m the one that has to try to rebuild the wreckage!

The sad news is that I crashed this on the building board. On the borescope I can see that there wasn’t adequate glue and I failed to add pins into the the rear stop. So the loss is totally my fault.
 
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Konrad said:
Thanks!

Yep, I fly my crashes all the way down. After all I’m the one that has to try to rebuild the wreckage!

The sad news is that I crashed this on the building board. On the borescope I can see that there wasn’t adequate glue and I failed to add pins into the the rear stop. So the loss is totally my fault.
Click to expand...
We live...we learn. Its one of those things you'll never forget now.
 
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