axis of evil

Video of first flight.
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay...50596409223542

S4ordie

I am not an aeronautical engineer but my guess is no. That is if the plane was sitting on its landing gear and was attempting flight in the horizontal. I think gravity is distributed across a longer, wider area and therefore less likely to attain lift. Think about holding a long pole vertically in your hand versus holding it horizontally with one hand. Much much harder to do though the weight is no different.

However, I do think the plane could easily take off in the vertical because the gravity axis is narrow/small and therefore its effect less. Many examples of VTOL demonstrators in the late 50's and 60's that took of and landed on their tails. Only VTOL aircraft that achieve flight from horizontal are those with vectored engines.

RKD in OKC

Dan, ha ha ha ah hah. You are funny. Gravity is the same no matter how it is distributed over an area. And the weight of the plane is the same. What you are describing is BALANCE which is the key to controlled flight. It takes less effort to maintain control if the center of the thrust is at the center of mass. If you have been keeping up on this thread, that first flight of the home made jet is a prime example of the effects of poor balance. When he got his jet up to speed it started rolling and turning out of control. This is typically what happens when a planes center of gravity is too far behind it's center of lift.

I am not an aeronautical engineer, but have designed built and flow a LOT of R/C model planes...reference the movie "Flight of the Pheonix."

sharknoob

What if you tie this to your flag pole.....

I know, its not lift


The blind landings must of been a joy

mark kibort

Actually, it is is possible, BUT, it depends on how the tail is attached to the pole, (where on the pole and where on the tail as was mentioned) and what method of "levitation" you are going to use, thrust or differential pressure on the wing. If the wing is symetrical, thrust line is horizontal, and you cant use flaps, then no. If the prop thrust alone is to do the task, it might take a lot of it to it and it will depend on where the attachment point is made.

RKD in OKC

While I was into R/C one of the R/C magazines sponsored a contest. It was for the widest flying envelope for a specific engine size. You got 3 points for every mph it could be controllably flown under 25 mph and 1 point for every mph over that. If the plane hovered, it had to be controlled by someone with average piloting skills, ie., no hanging it on the prop like in the 3D flight videos. It wasn't two months before a couple of aerospace companies joined in sponsoring the contest and the prize money got to over $25,000.

There were a couple of ingenious entries written about in the magazine including an entry by Burt Ratan. Both featured entries had rotating motor nacelles. The non-Ratan design had a very complicated system for controlling the plane in hover mode a lot like the thrust vectoring on modern fighter jets. Ratan's design would not hover, but would fly at only 3 mph and despite it's 4 lb weight (pretty light for a plane with that engine size) and could take off and fly with a 20 lb payload (amazing for the engine size). Ratan's design also transitioned from low speed to high speed flight much better.

About 9 months into the contest just a few months from the deadline for entries the magazine stopped posting articles about entries and no longer featured the ad for the contest with it's rules, sponsors, etc. The contest just ceased to exist totally. No winner, no explaination, no excuses, nothing, it just vanished. I and many others wondered what happened but were never given any info.

dprantl

Sounds to me like someone stumbled on something that a large company could patent/make lots of money from so they paid everyone off to cancel the thing and shut up.

Dan
'91 928GT S/C 475hp/460lb.ft

mark kibort

why do you think that was. sounds like a very cool contest. but that video shows that planes can be flown at 0mph and that same model easily reach 150mph with no problem. maybe it was a silly idea, because everyone can hover now, and it becomes a speed /power race, which isnt that exciting.
maybe they needed it to be gliding speed and full power speed in level flight to make it interesting.

RKD in OKC

Mark, I edit my post about the contest. The modern 3D aerobatic flying was ruled out as that flying does take quite a bit of skill. The entry included a video of the plane making low speed and high speed passes through a measured area.

Our local club had a contest using the same motor size, but it was for a racing plane. We were limited to a specific engine and 500 sq inches of wing area. The planes were raced 10 laps around a 500 ft pylon at each end course. The plane design was not the only factor as piloting skills helped tremendously racing around the poles. There were some really interesting entries. Long tapered wings like a glider and V tails were the fastest.

At that time the fastest clocked R/C plane record was held by a glider.

The most fun we had were when we raced the cheapest plane kit and motor you could buy and everyone had the same thing.

RicerSchnitzzle

How is it not lift? All "Lift" is, is the effect of the differential in pressure above and below the wing. Same thing as the differential in pressure between the front and rear of the props. Turn the props vertical and you have lift. Keep them normal and you have horizontal lift?

Props create the exact same forces a wing does. It's still an aerofoil. Only difference is it moves through the air instead of the air over the wing. If you were a bug sitting on a prop or on a wing, it would seem very much the same other than that too many jello shots dizzy feeling I know all too well.

Bottom line on the question is if the engine can create enough horizontal lift to pull the string tight it will raise the plane up to make the rope taught. Right? Nope... if you look at the "Taught" arc of the rope from straight horizontal down to verticle, you see the plane would pull the rope taught, pulling the nose down and hitting the props on the ground long before it could move the plane up in the air.

No lift over the wings equals prop in the ground... Now if you had the plane on stilts first...

svp928

RKD, I saw a video recently of an R/C plane that could hover, hang on the prop, fly BACKWARDS, fly standing on the nose with the fuselage vertical to the ground- it was incredible! I hadn't realized that the prop/engine technology had come so far...

mark kibort

a rocket engine on the back of the plane will pull the string taught, but no lift, I agree. But, dependign on how you tie the plane to the pole, and the amount of air flow that the prop can force over the wings, will determine the lift they can generate. no different than thrust vectoring. With a prop, there is a "horizontal" thrust component and a vertical force component of the air movin over the center section of the wing. with enough power and flow, where the upward force equals the force of gravity, the plane will leave the ground.

I think someone with a RC model needs to test this theory.


mk