Nice one Curt! Good to hear all is going well.
its been freezing down here so I haven't been bothered to get my plane back
in the air. I crashed it and broke the flimsy plastic motor mount again and
don't have my plane flyable. It's starting to warm up, So I will try do it
soon though.
did you ever find out why the MNAV goes crazy?
Cheers
Phil Sammons
On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 7:39 AM, Curtis Olson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 3:58 AM, Robert Black <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Thought this would be of interest about the UAV flight record being
>> broken.
>>
>> http://news.google.com/nwshp?tab=wn&ned=us&ncl=1239453441&hl=en&topic=t
>>
>
> I saw a movie of the launch and it took 3 people running to launch it. I
> was amazed that something so big could be launched at jogging speed.
>
> By the way, I had an interesting weekend. For the marinized UAV project
> I'm involved with, we needed to do some airframe performance tests (flown
> manually.) One of the guys that is helping lives in Indiana and he got in
> touch with a guy out there that has his own 2000' grass runway in the middle
> of a corn field. This guy has a '46 Luscome 8A, a 7/8th scale Tiger Moth,
> and two other home built aircraft. It turns out he was the first one to fly
> with a parafoil parachute when that was being first developed and had been
> involved in a number of aerospace research projects over the years, and had
> even been in the northrup flying wing. Since our UAV airframe was also a
> flying wing he was really interested in what we were doing and hung around
> much of the time we were there to watch. (He was very polite and just
> kicked back and watched, even though he probably could have pointed out all
> the things we were doing wrong.) :-)
>
> Friday we tested our wing with winglets versus moving the vertical fins
> inboard. I won't get into all the details, but winglets suck if that is
> your only vertical stabilizer on your wing, and more central fins really
> rock. The guy who owned the field ran inside, pulled out a book on northrup
> flying wings, pointed to the ones he'd been in and also showed us how they
> also moved to inboard vertical stabilizers. So we are a little slow (like
> 60 years behind the curve), but having fun learning this stuff over again.
>
>
> http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/UAS/Malolo2/2008-05-05--13.28.46/IMG_0891.JPG<http://baron.flightgear.org/%7Ecurt/UAS/Malolo2/2008-05-05--13.28.46/IMG_0891.JPG>
>
> So with inboard vertical stabs, our airframe was transformed into an
> entirely new airplane ... it flew like it was on rails, I could do agressive
> loops, rolls, and inverted flight (and combinations of those things.) It
> became almost impossible to stall. It really was amazing the difference
> this made.
>
> Our airframe has plug in wings, so Saturday we did test flights some larger
> area wings and also with different airfoils. (One of the guys had whipped
> up several sets of test wings for the weekend.) It turns out that the
> increased wing area accomplished exactly what we were hoping and one of the
> new airfoils will now be our official airfoil. It has a little reflex at
> the trailing edge, and overall flies much smoother. So for a couple of guys
> that don't have access to a wind tunnel and wouldn't know what to do with
> one anyway, we had a good time flight testing a couple different variations
> of our design and learned a ton about our aircraft in the process.
>
> I also flew my electric powered Senior Telemaster (8' wing) several times
> which Lowell (and his buddy who dropped by for a while) seemed to enjoy.
>
> http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/UAS/SeniorTelemaster/<http://baron.flightgear.org/%7Ecurt/UAS/SeniorTelemaster/>
>
> The runway was about 2000' long, mowed grass with 9' high corn encroaching
> on both sides. And we had a pretty significant south west cross wind. So
> it was a little tricky flying the base leg with the telemaster and turning
> final while ducking down in between the corn stalks, and fighting some of
> the swirling winds off the edge of the corn, and trying to spot the landings
> at my feet on the centerline. Let's just say I didn't have my best
> landings, but I didn't have my worst either. :-) I kept the telemaster out
> of the corn, but I put the wing (which is far more robust) into the corn
> twice on the first day. :-)
>
> We were packing up late in the day saturday after we finished all our
> flights and I jokingly turned to Lowell who had been spectating for 2 days,
> and suggested it was his turn to take up one of his aircraft so we could see
> him fly. The next thing I knew he was rolling out his Luscumbe and
> insisting that I go up flying with him. I didn't need a whole lot of
> convincing and we hopped in, fired up the motor and took off. I could write
> for another 2 hours describing the flight which was incredible, but I'll
> just say this is the first time I've been at the controls of an aircraft
> with complete discretion to go anywhere and do anything. So I mostly
> practiced coordinated turns and holding altitude. I experienced the "bump"
> once rolling out of a 360 degree turn. The luscumbe has a stick, not a yoke
> and requires a lot of rudder pedal action, so I had a blast trying to get a
> feel for flying with the rudder. I was surprised at how heavy the ailerons
> felt and how much muscle I had to put in to get any kind of steep roll, and
> in contrast how mushy and easy the elevator and rudder felt to move around.
> I brought my camera up with me, but Lowell kept me busy the whole time so I
> didn't get any pictures in the air.
>
> The sun was nearly setting and Lowell pointed out that it's brighter up at
> altitude than on the ground, and with his old eyes, if we didn't land pretty
> soon, I'd have to be the one doing the landing. He walked me through the
> approach and let me fly the whole thing down to very short final, at which
> point he calmly started helping with the controls and aiming us back to the
> runway again. The luscombe gets real yawie (if that's a word) on final when
> the speed slows way up. It seems like you can move the nose back and forth
> a lot with the rudder without affecting your actual ground track very much.
> I think I would have needed a couple laps around the pattern to get a better
> feel for it before I'd have a serious chance at dropping it in on the grass
> strip between the tall corn fields.
>
> My summer soccer team made it all the way to the championship this year and
> I had to miss the final game on Sunday because I was out of town for UAV
> flight testing. I was feeling more than a little frustrated about that
> before I left on this trip, but after a very successful and fun 2 days of
> flight testing, and then getting the chance to fly the 46 Luscumbe, there's
> little doubt I made the right choice with my time. :-) And for what it's
> worth, my team won in the championship game which probably wouldn't have
> happened with me on the field anyway. :-)
>
> Curt.
> --
> Curtis Olson:
> http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/<http://baron.flightgear.org/%7Ecurt/>
>
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