>From time to time people mention that our j3cub model in FlightGear is
rather simplistic and dated by today's standards. It was a nice model for
the time when it was built, and it still flies great, but visually it hasn't
been updated to match the level of detail and quality we have with many of
the current FlightGear aircraft being developed.
I recently discovered that I know someone who is pretty good friends with
the owner of Cub Crafters in Yakima, WA. Cub Crafters makes a modern kit
and a production version of the classic Super Cub design. They have a
"Carbon Cub" which is much lighter and stronger than the original steel tube
design. They even have an over powered super cub variant than can top out
at 180 mph +++ ! They are a cool company doing some really cool work.
Because of this personal connection with the owner of Cub Crafters, I think
I could get some more detailed specs and dimensions if someone in our
community was interested in building a modern "super cub" version of this
classic design.
Here is the Cub Crafter web site. Find your way to their calendar pages
too, they have some really great pictures on their web site.
http://cubcrafters.com/
The Piper Cub is one of the best known and best loved aircraft ever built so
it would be great to have a really nicely detailed version in FlightGear.
Aside from that, I have a personal selfish motivation. Recently my friend
and the ower of Cub Crafters got together, and because they both have
engineering brains, they started brain storming several cool projects that
they could combine forces on. A couple of these ideas are actually pretty
exciting and they are interested in seeing if they could pursue funding to
develop one or more of them. A nice 3d model of a Super Cub could be used
to prototype and visualize these ideas and demonstrate them to potential
funding organizations.
So if anyone out there is interested in tackling a super cub project for
FlightGear, let me know what kind of information you would need and I will
do my best to secure it for you. The super cub design has been around for a
long time so there is probably a ton of information on the web as well. It
might even be possible to do some simple instrumentation of a real carbon
cub to collect some actual flight test data (that would be a longer term
project ... but the owner of Cub Crafters is friendly towards that sort of
thing and I am currently developing some hardware and software that could be
used for that purpose.)
Best regards,
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson: http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/
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