On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 09:11:38AM -0800, John Erickson wrote: | http://modellvideos.de/videos/KnuffelVerstellprop-die-zwote.wmv
i.e. fly backwards thanks to a variable pitch prop. There was an article in the `Fly RC' magazine that I got yesterday about variable pitch props. Pretty impressive that they've gotten it working. Did the article mention this site and/or movie, or is it just a coincidence that you happened to post this today? I always figured that a variable pitch prop would be too much hardware for a small R/C plane (increasing weight and reducing reliablity), but obviously these people have made it work. And it looks good -- going straight through the middle of an outrigger motor is very clever. What I've wanted to do instead was put a reversable ESC (from a car, most likely) into a plane with a direct drive, non-folding prop. Something like my XE2 (basically a Zagi clone) which doesn't have spoilers or any other way to bleed off airspeed. With the prop shape as it is, I doubt it would provide much thrust when run in reverse, but it would certainly provide enough thrust/drag to slow the plane down in a hurry. And it would probably sound really wierd. Never got around to doing this, however. (With a folding prop, putting it into reverse would run the risk of it trying to fold back into the fuselage while it's under power -- the thrust produced by the prop would be trying to close it, with the centrifigal force trying to open it -- I'm not sure who would win. And with a gear box, bad things could happen if you suddenly went back from forward to backward thrust.) The variable pitch prop would remove the issue regarding the sudden direction change -- as the direction never changes. The folding prop issue would remain, however -- unless some sort of lock were incorporated. Not much need for a folding prop on a 3D plane, however. To make this soaring related, well, I soar the XE2 quite a lot -- especially when the slope lift is weak, or if I'm trying to do thermalling. It's nice not needing a hi-start or winch. But there's really no way to slow it down for landing, since I can't even do a slip like I could in a 4 channel airplane. Fortunately, when a bad landing turns into a crash or a cartwheel, it doesn't really mind :) -- Doug McLaren, [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Daddy, what does FORMATTING DRIVE C mean?" 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
