Steve Hosgood wrote: > Over the winter of 1944/1945 certain Allied POWs were imprisoned in > Colditz Castle (east of Chemnitz, Saxony). Some of the British prisoners > got desperate enough to build a glider in an attic. They never launched > because the war was effectively over by the time the machine was ready, > but in 1999, Britain's "Channel 4" TV channel commisioned a replica to > be built and flown. > > It flew surprisingly well. > > > I've recently been working on a FDM for the Colditz Glider. If you'd > like to try it, I've put it up for comments on: > > ftp://tallyho.bc.nu/pub/steve/flightgear/colditz_20050518.tgz > > > I initially modelled the glider by entering the known physical > dimensions of the machine into aeromatic and claiming that it was a > "light aircraft with 0 engines" rather than a glider. It was, after all > built of floorboards and random junk covered with bedsheets doped with > porridge! > > So, it's rather heavy for its size (110kg/240lb) and was expected to > carry two (70kg/160lb) men. > > My FDM correctly models the stated stall speed of about 28 knots and > sink rate of 240fpm. I have personal experience with slow-flying gliders > in the shape of early 1980's hang-gliders and so I've added modelling > for a fairly serious nose-dive on stalling the glider, plus an > entertaining amount of ground-effect to make landings resemble what I > recall from the hang-glider days. > > All the photos and plans of the original Colditz glider show it to have > had almost no dihedral on its wings. The photos of the 1999 replica show > that this was the case for the copy too. My FDM has taken that into > account too, and indeed you'll find when flying it that it's pretty > unstable in roll. > > ************** > > I would not have liked to have been the pilot who took this thing off > the chapel roof in Colditz, at night, on its maiden and only flight. > Stall it below 100m (300ft) from the ground and you're dead! It switches > from flying like a glider to flying like a piano almost instantly. Oh, > and 100m (300ft) is your launch height above the valley floor..... > > The original glider had no instruments of course. For this model, I've > pinched the instruments panel from the Schweizer 2-33 that was already > in Flightgear. I did this to give me some idea of airspeed, to > compensate for not having the wind in my face whilst flying! I did > however re-scale the airspeed indicator to concentrate on the 10 - 90 > knot range. ( I suspect that the Colditz glider would fall apart at much > higher velocities! ) > > Disclaimer: > This is a toy. It's fun, and probably isn't too far wrong from modelling > the real Colditz Glider. However, I've never even *seen* the Colditz > Glider replica (in the Imperial War Museum now, apparently) far less > flown it. So I don't know. > > Please try it and if you have any suggestions, I'll be happy to take > them on board. I'm expecting complaints about the stall characteristics > which are probably too savage, but then, hang-gliders stall hard, so why > not this machine? > > There's no 3D model, sorry. Suggestions for how to do one, or (better) > offers of help gratefully received! > > > Enjoy! > Steve Hosgood. > > > _______________________________________________ > Flightgear-devel mailing list > Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org > http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel > 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d >
It doesn't look like it would be too hard to do a 3D model. Not having to do instruments would only make it easier. I would suggest making a custom HUD instead of grafting fake instruments onto the model. If there's interest I think I could hack out a pretty nice textured model in a few days. Josh _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
