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
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/
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/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/
_______________________________________________
Flightgear-users mailing list
Flightgear-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-users
