150+ mph club

[Craig Toutolmin]

Tim Bigley hit 150.1 mph today with a Stratos SR crosstail. Fairly light conditions around 15 mph but with moments of great separation. Bart Viao hit 149.4 with his Stratos SR. Both pilots were flying an oval pattern and hitting very hard but precise turns at the top and bottom. It was some very impressive flying! Tim's speed is the current hill record.

[Ollie]

Craig,
Did anyone put a stop watch on a circuit of the course for the 150 mph lap? That would allow us to compute the distance and also estimate the average coefficient of lift around the fast lap. Some hard data would be useful in the design process.

[ShredAir]

Funny, not too long ago I told Tim I'd expect the stabs of the SR to go at about 150mph, and apparently I was right on... :o)
The Stratos SR is a great F3F plane good for about 150-mph DS. That's it. -- I'm glad to see people (Craig and Tom S., and now Ollie, mostly) working on dedicated DS planes, because I'm not asking for more carbon in the Stratos stabs, if you get my drift... :o)

Dieter Mahlein
http://shredair.com

[Bart Vaio]

"Funny, not too long ago I told Tim I'd expect the stabs of the SR to go at about 150mph, and apparently I was right on... :o)"

On Dieters advice i punched out 0.6 before the breaking point :) hehe Just kidding, honestly, for a non-DS specific designed plane the Stratos really impressed me. The wing was completely solid in the 140-150 area with no wierdness (torsional flex) going on, it was definately stable. It speaks volumes to the quality of work thats coming from your suppliers work shops! Now how about some carbon stabs in yellow!.... :D Its definately one great F3F and Sloperacing plane.


Bart

[Craig Toutolmin]

Mickey Crawley cranked off 154 mph with a 66" Velocity 5/7/03.

[Reed]

Hey Craig,

Are you counting Tim Bigley's 158 and Craig T.'s 160 the other day?

I think Tim's was a PB.

[Craig Toutolmin]

I'm mentioning those that have cracked 150 and the speed that they topped out that day to do so. Personal bests are at Gliderking.com. I have to get around to updating mine.

[hkrussell]

Craig,
Is that the Mickey Crawley that used to build the Velocity? Are there any plans for a new batch? (w/flaps?)

154 with a 66" span and Barry hit 138(?) with the 60" Nemesis. That would have been cool!

Ken

[Craig Toutolmin]

Steve Situm hit 159 mph yesterday with a carbon NYX. Atta boy Steve!

Craig

[nwoods]

Originally posted by Craig Toutolmin
Personal bests are at Gliderking.com.

Actually, the DS personal Bests are online on ASRO's site:
http://www.sloperacing.com/results/ds-speeds.htm

If you are a member of the +150 club, please submit your entry to us with date, location, plane, witness, and of course, speed!

[Bart Vaio]

Actually gliderking.com keeps a list as well, you can find it here,
http://www.gliderking.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=XForum&file=viewthread&tid=976
These are personal best's. Asro's site only lists those speeds in excess of 150mph.

Bart

[bjaffee]

A few of my friends went up to Vincent this Weds and they all set new personal bests. Unfortunately, I wasn't there to put the "+" in my 150mph PB (which is bugging me now!).

Congrats to Andy McKittrick, who went 184 with his Sting DS.

Kyle Paulson went 175 with a Nemesis!!! Not a PB for him, but I think it might be some kinda 60" record.

And, Bill Patterson who went 148 with a BPV Wizard. He was afraid to push it because of some issues with the v-tail (imagine that).


AKAIK, all planes returned in one piece.

[nwoods]

175 with a stock Nemesis at Vincent?

I'm sorry Brett, but I'm a little skeptical.

I remember reading about how hard Barry Baskin and Joe Wurts were pushing their Nemisis to go 140 something the same day that Reese clocked 186 with the Wiz and Tom Seitz with his scratch built Mojo.

If I recall, they simply couldnt' get it to go faster, it had hit terminal velocity. Also, I have seen a Nemesis wing delaminate at much lower velocities, probably no more than 110 or so at Los Banos.

175 sounds, well...fantastic.

[bjaffee]

Well, I'm going by a phone message, so I'll have to get some clarification. FWIW, I've heard second hand that Joe had far exceeded the 143mph he got at the DS fest with a Nemesis (and subsequently had the plane blow up).

At any rate, I have no doubt about Kyle's DS'ing skills, and the radar gun is the same type Deiter was seen using to pick up Paul Naton's 177mph record way-back-when.

But , I'll try to get clarification...Andy's a video fanatic, so hopefully he got it on tape.

[nwoods]

Cool!

[bjaffee]

Just got back from Andy's, having watched the digital video of their Vincent adventure...

Andy's 184 with the Sting DS looked and sounded solid. He definitely had te +170mph "jet engine" noise going. :)

Kyle's 175mph with the Nemesis. 2 things: First, little planes weren't made to go that fast...it looked really squirrely. Second, I've never heard a 60" plane ROAR like that! Even if the 175 is somehow a fluke, he got quite a few 150+ and 160+ circuits in. BTW, this is an older Nemesis with no flaps.

Hopefully the video will be available this week.

They also made a run to Vincent yesterday with somewhat less happy results. Bill Patterson broke 150 with his Wizard (151mph, I think), and promptly had the v-tail twist completely off. The plane fliped inverted, and bill put the flaps down (or up, I suppose), and apparently it landed without further damage.

Finally, confirming a sneaking feeling I've had about the Opus W, Andy took his a bit over 150mph, then had one of the curvy wingtips fold up just past the aileron as the plane crossed the bumpy boundary layer. I will stick to the Opus V.

[Bart Vaio]

This seems to be an increasingly common problem with Wizards, maybe the NTSB should issue a safety advisory or something :)

[bjaffee]

A friend is toying with the idea of combining the Wizard wing with a reinforced Raider fuselage. Sort of a Wizard/Speed Runner.

[Ade]

Has there been any confirmed failures of the wiz at lower speeds? What about the convential Vtail versions that are appearing now, are they any better/worse?

Ade

[bjaffee]

There's a non-flying v-tail version of the Wizard?

[nwoods]

The Wizard II's are full flying stabs

The Wizard I's are not

Sounds like there is now a Wizard III ???

[bjaffee]

Was looking on Espen's site for info and only found this:

"Due to recent failure in the Wizard Compact 2 tail area mainly because of DS flight ET-air will no longer encourage to use this model in DS. Even the model has proven to be outstanding for this purpose, this type of failure will only lead to people going faster and faster. So to strengthen an already strong model will probably show that something else will fail. The race will continue to reach beyond 206.6 mph (332km/h). ET-Air is proud that this kind of speed was reached by a Wizard Compact 2 but the model fluttered and crashed and this is not so good. DS flights in this kind of speed is dangerous and must be respected as such. Only the pilots are responsible if something goes wrong. "

[nwoods]

Shameless plug: The Blade XL 2.5M (98") glider is due in sometime this month. Looks a lot like a cross between the Opus W and the Wizard. Has a 2 piece tail, but more like a Pike WR rather than the Wiz (stationary stabs with conventional moving trailing edge surfaces)

teaser:

[nwoods]

Oops! Wrong image. That was the thumb. Here is an 800 x something image of the Blade XL

Pricing is not yet determined, due to the dollar losing 18% against the Euro in the past 3 weeks! However, it will be under $700

[osborn]

You can now order the Wiz II with a conventional hinged V-tail. It is still a Wiz II. Dave Reese told me he thought the fuse was the same, but they use a different close-out to accomodate the bolt on one piece hinged V-tail unit. I haven't heard any reports about how it flys (if any differently), or how strong it is. Even if it isn't as structurally sound as the flying tails, it probably will not flutter in the same way (if at all). Dave also said he thought it was the same airfoil as the flying V-tail, but wasn't sure about it. If true, that would be kind of wierd since the flying tail foil doesn't look like your typical hinged tail foil.

Regarding the Blade, it does look kind of Wiz like and cool. However it is not the same airfoil as the Wiz. It probably won't have that "speed step" that everyone notices about the Wiz. On the other hand, maybe it won't go as fast?

-- James

[nwoods]

Or... maybe it will go faster. The Blade airfoil is pretty quick. I have a Wizard, and will do a lot of comparision testing, I can assure you.

[bjaffee]

I finally put a marginal amount of "+" in 150+ yesterday at Vincent. Couldn't fly my Sting because of a flap problem, but I managed to get my Opus to 153mph...for the last time.

The Opus was definitely not liking it. The wings were really flexing, both positive and negative, as it passed through the boundary layer on the top. At speeds over 145, the entire wing was fluttering badly. I did a 150mph earlier in the day, and decided that was about enough. Later, though, things smoothed out a bit and I clicked of a 153, which suprised me, so I decided to go for a few more circles.

After a 148mph pass, the Opus fluttered violently on the downhill portion of the circle, before the bottom turn, which it hadn't done before (it had previously only done it when coming up the hill). I had about 1 second of zero control (though it seemed much, much longer), and the plane stuffed into the hill.

[bjaffee]

The aftermath: Its actually worse then it looks...

[bjaffee]

Well, today (June 28) at Vincent was better than last time I was there, as the photo in the previous post can attest. :)

In addition to Kyle Paulson and Doug Reel joining the 200+ club, we had 3 people beating their personal bests.

Bruce Bedoe joined the 150+ club as he smoothly flew his Opus V to 167mph.

Andy McKittrick flew his Sting-DS to 187mph.

I got a 195mph flying my Sting-DS.

[Bro]

Brett:
Sounds like a great day! How much velocity was there coming in on the frontside?
Next time, get one of the guys to loan you 5mph more! :D

Bob

[Craig Toutolmin]

Congratulations to all! Looks like Parker should be spelled with a lower case p with the results that you guys are getting at Vincent.

[bjaffee]

I think the estimates were 25-30mph on the front side. Most of the guys who have been there fairly often thought it was a fairly typical day.

[bjaffee]

Originally posted by Craig Toutolmin
Congratulations to all! Looks like Parker should be spelled with a lower case p with the results that you guys are getting at Vincent.

Thanks. And to think we only really started going to Vincent because the landing zone is better...we figured the DS would not be as good as Parker is.