<<Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:29:04 -0400 From: Mark Drela <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The reason that most 2m gliders "fly like crap" (quoting one CRRC flier), is that they are WAY too heavy for their span. Consider a log-log plot of weight versus span. The following three points lie roughly on a straight line........>> Point well made and a major beef with many 2M ships. A case in point is the Mini-Graphite with the original V-tail (not really a full 2M, by the way). Mine comes in at 45oz with a pretty neutral CG. The MG also uses the MH32 and it does not take kindly to flaps - another advantage of some of the purpose designed (for flaps) AG airfoils. The MG has a very low dihedral angle (~ 2 deg) and a rather wide V-angle (low effective vertical stab area) which affects the stability and yaw response. Get it going fast enough and it's great but that's not conducive to TD work. Still, it was good for an LSFIV flight and some wood - but it was a lot of work. And so on for other ships (Whisper 2M, etc.). As previously noted, many of these look like slopers that are being marketed as TD planes and it just doesn't work very well. Sure would be nice if Denny put a winchable version of the Wind Dancer into production (hint, hint....) - Dave R RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
