Show us what you are working on..

[Konrad]

That might make finding the glide portion a bit difficult. It is advised to keep power and lift/drag controls separate.

Per the lift equation power is to overcome drag. Now with gliders we can't change the power variable but we can control the drag. So on the other side of the equation adding drag has the same effect as reducing power, reducing drag has the same effect as adding power. So with gliders we learn that the throttle stick really is just speed control, be it power or drag.

Use crow just like you use throttle. If you are going to overshoot the landing zone pull back on the stick to slow down. If you are going to land short move the stick up to cover more ground (speed up).

 

[Konrad]

Yeah I definitely hear what you guys are saying. I think what it comes down to as far as the stick direction is what makes sense to you. For me flying and having it up during normal flight just seems really weird and I would have to like think about it all the time. I don't think of the left stick is fast or slow I think of it as engaging crow more or less so that's why I have it in the down position normal.

And as far as @Konrad comment about how it's working I am totally sure that I have not set it up correctly and I probably should have said this is my first attempt and a long process of figuring out how to get crow working on this thing. And so I'm probably going to use the other two dials I have up on the shoulders of my controller so that maybe I can adjust the individual parts of Crow but this is definitely going to be a get way up high slowly add crow and see what happens and probably not even use it to land until I've tested it a bunch.

Test, test and more testing. But you shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel. This has all been done before. We move forward on the shoulders of others.

Do you fly any kind of powered models?

 

[Konrad]

It looks to me like you have too much time invested in this model to perform basic control set up testing. I'd make a 1 meter (foam and tape) test model, to learn how the flaps interact with the pitch control of the plank aircraft.

 

[thenated0g]

It looks to me like you have too much time invested in this model to perform basic control set up testing. I'd make a 1 meter (foam and tape) test model, to learn how the flaps interact with the pitch control of the plank aircraft.

Thats a good idea. I could take one of my other planks or a new quick one and drop in 2 more control surfaces to mimic this and see what happens.

 

[gp49]

Not sure if you checked into Taborca wing but here it is. The website has a spec sheet for set up for different flying modes............

Let model - TABORCA - gallery

Taborca model, wings

www.letmodel.cz

http://www.letmodel.cz/technical-data/taborca-guide.pdf

http://www.letmodel.cz/technical-data/taborca-guide.pdf

 

[Konrad]

Nice way to show some of the interactions. But please note that the flaps on swept wing Taborca are ahead of the CG.

Your 4m is close to a classic straight wing plank.

 

[Wayne]

The foam model sample is a good idea. I suspect your elevator throw is way too much, but really do not have a clue since the surface is kind of small compared to total wing span. The layout on this plane is very different from my experiences, so not sure what will be needed. A lot of aileron is generally needed, no worries there.

For the flap mix, yes, great caution will be the name of the game. I use my throttle trim to adjust a global variable that is used for the elevator compensation. You may be able to use that global variable to adjust all flight surfaces up or down for elevator trim. I will suggest limiting the amount of surface throws in this mix as too much will make the plane impossible to control. Just a guess, but probably pretty good one based on what I see with radical crow mixes on conventional planes. You start to loose control authority the more "brake" you dial in regardless of airspeed.

I can see that mix becoming rather complex if you wanted to add yaw control. (crow on one side of the plane.) Should be interesting, and a bit dangerous. Proceed with caution.

 

[Konrad]

I agree with Wayne in that the throttle trim is good for elevator comp. In my day, before digital trims, these were pots. What I should have said is attach the comp to a variable input rather than a switch.

 

[Wayne]

Nate - You can use the 2 buttons on the top of the radio to adjust the GV up and down. One side is up and the other down.. LOL

 

[Konrad]

Not so much what I'm working on, but more like what I've accomplished. That's right I made a lot of foam confetti!

Elsewhere I had said I was moving over to Spektrum until FrSky got their crap together on this ACCST issue. Well true to my word I've been flying this great Taft Scorpion 90mm 8 cell jet for a few months. Everything was great no RF link issues and I got all the control surface to move as I wanted not an easy thing to do using the crippling drop down menus. I should hope I had a good RF link as I had eight antennas!

Urgent firmware update to all X receivers and RF modules (ACCST D16) just released

Thanks. Yes indeed, some planes are hard to get at and others are just not flown enough or valuable enough to worry about. But for hand built kits I want to take reasonable measures to protect them. I have an external module. Can it be updated? Or will it be necessary to buy one that...

forum.alofthobbies.com

What you see here is a classic case of flipping switches rather than aviating!

As a result of Covid-19 it had been months since I was at my flat land field. That and the fact that I don't use my Spektrum DX9 for anything other than low emotional aircraft (Foam). I wasn't really familiar with the switch placement and their functions.

I had just taken off and making my departure turn. I had suck up the gear and lowered the nose to pick up speed. I was 5 meter above the ground and level. I had just retracted the flaps and really starting to gain some speed. Wanting to look smooth in the low level high speed pass I tried to switch to low rates. Well I flip the flap switch rather than the dual rate switch.

The flaps came out full 80° (for landing). This pitch the nose down hard and fast. I yanked up, so far so good I have my wing maintain rigged washout when pulling hard elevator. So that was the first mistake throwing out the flaps rather than switching to low rates. With the flaps out and the hard pull I had lost a lot of airspeed. As this jet had a lot of power I was still ok as I could just powered my way out of the problem.

I don't know why I thought; crap the flaps are out slowing me down. So I tried to retract the flaps back into take off position (about 20°). Yep, you guessed it, I full retracted the flaps. The plane then snapped (very low air speed, high alpha and no rigged wash out. I caught one snap but drove her into another. Well, you can see the results!

I'm sorry to see this jet go. I was really liking how this Taft 90mm Scorpion was at landing. She landed like a butterfly with sore feet! This model has a bad reputation for being difficult to land. Not so with a few mods any real modeler could perform. I really like showing off how this $269 Taft Scorpion out performed the $445 FMS 90mm Scorpion.

You can learn more about the mods here.

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www.hippocketaeronautics.com

All the best,
Konrad

Lesson learned is take the time to re-familiarize yourself with any TX, particularly when you have been away from it for any period of time. This was a classic example of poor piloting, as I was flipping switches rather than flying the model!

 

[John in Boston]

I've got this lil' kitty underway... click here to view the photos and captions: Wrangling a Grumman F4F Wildcat into a tubby little slope glider.

Just 1/16th scale, 28.5" wingspan, wheels up and locked, dimensions very near scale; control via ailerons and elevator and poor piloting technique.
And just the click the "ℹ" Info option there to view my caption with each photo...hopefully not too ridiculous...
More to come as the build unfolds/unravels...
TECH TIP: You also can click SLIDESHOW there if you want to alienate your friends and loved ones.

 

[thenated0g]

Not sure if anybody here is a fan of the Rc afterhours podcast but i made a little sign for Andre this weekend:

 

[Wayne]

Very nice and a cool logo.

 

[Konrad]

I just got back from a visit at Aloft Hobbies. I saw what looked like a "team building exercise" for the staff. It really looked like a fun activity. Maybe someone on the Aloft staff can chime in on with details as to what I saw. But basically it looked like what can you build that will fly using the shipping card board.

Now what I thought was hilarious was Wayne's entry. The guy's are claiming that Wayne is channeling Konrad's engineering. That is he put way too much time into making flush mounted servos. While I'm all for lowering the drag one needs to look at what are the "cost to benefits". Wayne needs to step back and take a closer look at the bigger picture. In his design the drag of the servos is so far to the right of the decimal point as to be irrelevant. I know, I know just where I'd focus my attention.

All kidding aside I hope the gang a Aloft posts some photos and the rules of this exercise.

 

[thenated0g]

From your favorite place @Konrad ?

 

[Konrad]

That's it! I don't see Wayne's entry. And no FB is not my favorite spot.

 

[thenated0g]

I made something for it as well. Gotta wait till the end of the build to see it though

 

[Doc James Hammond]

Designg model...LOTS OF MODELZ!

Oh and one full size ultralight.

Doc.

 

[Wayne]

We have not published much on our build challenge just yet as you all will play a pivotal role in this little contest. We will all present our designs here on the forum and you will all get to vote on your favorite. I expect a lot of silliness will be mixed in.

I'll share the very short version with you for now. As we are all pilots here, we could not help but see potential plane parts in our shipping supplies. We decided this could be fun and we started throwing out some ideas for the contest. We came up with the challenges before we started building. The challenges are far enough apart that it forced the design of the planes to go one way or another. No one plane is likely to dominate in all challenges. The limitations are the planes can only be built from materials we use in our shipping area. No carbon, etc. The planes are mostly cardboard and mine has some foam. We did allow plywood firewalls and hobby parts in the forms of push rods and control horns as we were all too lazy to wbuild our own. The main structure is all shipping supplies.

Some of the challenges will be:

• Forum voting for best plane
• Spot landings at every flight (better score the closer to the spot you land)
• Duration Flight - who can stay up the longest (No battery swaps allowed, all flights will use the same sized battery)
• Pylon Race
• Aerobatics
• Combat

The planes range in form and build method. Most of us have not built much from cardboard or similar materials, so this was a bigger challenge than some of us would have thought. Getting a smooth airfoil turned out to be one of the biggest challenges. I think the lightest plane is probably under 2 lbs, and the heaviest around 10 lbs. Wing areas are all over the place. Each plane is different. We have built them on Friday nights after work right here in our shipping area. Thats some dedicated staff to want to stay on a friday night.

 

[Konrad]

Go DELTA!!

I see a lot of cat back airfoils! (ref. Einstein's airfoil)

Einstein’s Wing Flops

Einstein once took an interest in aviation and tried to design an improved wing. He wrote a technical article in August 1916 in which he proposed a new shape for wings that he hoped would improve lift. His proposal was […]

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