Dear website visitors, durring my long stay in USA i already visit some major events like ETOC, SEFF and JOE NALL now the final competition (XFC) left before i will fly back home to Lithuania. Hopefully i will find time to update you with all videos and pictures i took at top USA events i visit. So far please check them on my Facebook. However between SEFF and Joe Nall i was invited by Mr. Cliff Whitney to his internet radio show about RC. www.rcradionetwork.com . We had fun 2 hours show, and talk about my RC carrer, competitions, planes and orther interesting subjects.
SFG´s History (Article and pictures by Mr. Manuel Santos from Mexico)
In April 2008 a friend of me ( Juan Carlos de la Parra, that has built planes with me ) and I ,came up with the idea of helping my plane to compensate the thin air and the altitude, (I fly at 8000 Feet over sea level ), at this altitude the planes had a tendency to stall faster than on sea level and you required more inputs on the surface to make the same effect... we experiment last year with the SFG attached on the wing tips with great results in any maneuvers which required lateral area.
We built the plane and the SFG´s as light as we can ,to compensate the lost of powers, but for helping the side forces and the stall effect, we decided to incorporate Slats on the tip of the wing with different air foil than on the root to make the tip to stall later... also a very important benefit for me is that it will slow the roll rate of the plane giving me the time that I need to control the plane at faster roll rates, but without decreasing the deflection on the ailerons to get control at hover, also it increases the wing area and make the tail moment a little further, giving me less wing rocking and more tracking on the plane.
Adding almost 400 Sq. In. of side area with the SFG and locate them in front of the CG help me to raise the nose and to give less amount of rudder deflection, making less % of coupling mixes and getting more lift on lateral maneuvers.. we also gave .6 negative degrees on the wing to help the plane not to drop to much in inverted and keeping the CG not that far back to get more precision on the maneuvers, without losing 3D capability at all...
We have to deal with weight, it is not good to have weight on the tips of the wing. To compensate the inertia you need to break the roll and to stop it, we built them open frame with carbon fiber reinforcement so we can keep them light, adding just 29 grams on each SFG.
Over all I can say we get our goal and the plane definitely is unbelievable! it just react as I want and I can say it fly great, better than I speck... the plane is 35 1/2 Pounds.
I want to thanks Mark Leseberg and Jason Shulman for the help they gave me when I talked about this...
Mr. Manuel Santos, multiple XFC participant.
SFG and other aerodynamic devices on F3P planes.
F3P aeromusical and specially pattern planes are extremely good environment to test new aerodynamic ideas. Low cost of main material depron allow us to test any ideas very quickly, besides this depron is very easy to work with.
Here you can see my 2011 season F3P planes, on the left Arrow is used for freestyle (aeromusical) competitions, plane have to be very agile and still be able to perform some smooth and graceful maneuvers to calm music, small SFG's on wing tips allow me to do this, it slow down crazy roll speed, and give advantage in integrated circles.
As you can see plane on the right (Symmetirc), use much more aerodynamic devices, and have more SFG's, brakes and bigger side area. All this build to achieve pleasant flying characteristics, modern F3P sequences are getting more and more difficult providing many maneuvers with integrated rolls, knife edge square loops and so on. From my competition experience i can say when plane fly constant speed in up lines and down lines, always fly smooth and don't rush judges have more time to score and usually you receive more points for that. When we compare plane without SFG and other aerodynamic devices, with plane that have them, you can see obvious differences in knife edge flight. In both cases good pilot can fly planes on same altitude (center of gravity stay in same place), but with SFG you need less up rudder to keep plane in same altitude and angle of fuselage don't change so much, while at same time plane without any "aerodynamic device help", change fuselage angle more noticeably. This can be seen on integrated circles, point rolls and simple knife edge flight. Such small things for average judge can give impression of altitude change and not precise control, this can harm pilot in hi level competitions.
Happy new year my dear visitors, here is small present for you, video from Dormund Intermodellbau 2009. I notice i have more video material from competitions/show's i visit in 2009 year than time to edit everything. But i think such top material that we saw in Dortmund Intermodellbau atleast deserves to be shown for everyone!
Well last practice done, (hopefully) all equipment packed, tommorow morning im driving to Znojmo (CZ) to take part in Europe Extreme Flight Championship, from participant list you can tell level will be real hi. This year news is team competition, i will fly with last year EXFC champion Gernot Bruckmann, this will be quite fun experience since we are the only team that have pilots from different countries.
As i wrote in last article, i will use Extreme Flight RC 110inch YAK 54, so far i made about 60 flights with this plane and im really happy with my setup and YAK flying characterystics.
First hover affter brake in.
Big models is new experience for me, and im gratefull for some friends imput and advices, Mathew Poots gave me some advices how to improve cooling. First few test flights i made with canopy without any plate in front, and i notice engine become quite hot. Such setup mean allot of air was able to go in cowling, but there was not enought area to leave.
Here is Mathew advice;
I noticed one thing from your photographs on your site which I would recommend you do. Although the cowl opening on the Yak is huge, very little air will flow over the cylinder heads with the big hole in the front. The air will simply flow outside of the cowl and not cool the engine well. What we do and many others is to create some ducting which forces the air straight onto the cylinders. We have carried out tests with this and here is one interesting result, a DA100 on a QQ Yak54 with the cowl off (so the engine was in open air) after a flight, engine temperature at the cylinder head was 92 deg, we let the engine cowl and put the cowl on with ducting, then flew again, temperature was 56 deg at the cylinder head after the flight. I have attached a few pictures of ducting, we just use some light ply and light glass cloth to bond it to the cowl.
I did exactly like Mathew suggest and result was amazing, engine themperature was much lower.
Next update i mount was PowerBox smoke pump, it help not only to make flight more atractive for spectators but also to set up right C.G.
Soft mounted pump from Powerbox, very reliable unit.
Smoke pump is connected to both headers, i ask for such modification for MTW.
Build with German quality!!!
Some random pictures of YAK during practice;
Some evening/night flying in Alytus;
If i find internet, i will try to update my page with some news from EXFC, this should be amazing week!!!
Sory guys for really late update, but its crazy time for me right now..;) Anyway few weeks ago together with Evaldas we visit one of biggest RC shows in Europe. This time it was quite different from shows i flew in past. ICM show was held in Ferta Alais airfield, with very nice gras runway, and interesting background. This field had few working WW2 planes, it was quite interesting to see them in flight.
Mr. Christophe Paysant le Roux
Votec from versailess modeles import, that i flew in show.
Powered by 6S 4400mah Flight Power EonX lypo and unique AXI 5320/18 motor.
VMI stand.
Bill Hempel planes was flown by Belgium demo team.
Sasha Fliegener C ARF Yak powered by DA-170, unfortunately because of to bussy schedule and strict french organizers possition Sasha was unable to fly in show...
Bipe that was 2009 poster, really amazing plane.
Most impressive plane i saw durring the weekend, unfortunately because of propeler blade failure plane, was damaged on friday and was unable to fly in show....
One of the biggest models in Europe, powered with Valach 800cc radial engine.
Special thanks goes to Mr. Romain Ruck for invitation to show and great time in France, also big thank you goes to Martin and Stephanie for warm welcome on the way home!!!
Waiting line.
