Q about fighting wind or maybe wing incidence

[fdisk]

I have a high wing R/E/T electric plane. My initial config was with an undercamber wing and it flies good except wind seems to give it a hard time. I tried sheeting the bottom with saran-wrap to get a flat bottom and it only did marginally better. The weight ranges between 12 and 16 oz depending on wing and power.

I'm not sure if some of this is pilot error or design flaw. One of the things that happens to me is in wind of roughly 10+ mph it gets caught in a dead hover a lot. From like 3/4 to full throttle I don't get any headway. Would this be my driving or maybe too much positive incidence? I'd like to be able to deal with 10-15 mph winds and either climb or make headway and not drop. There aren't many peers around here so I don't get to see many other planes and how they do compared to mine.

Thanks.

[Dick Huang]

fdisk,
There are two ways to penetrate head winds: 1) move the CG forward and 2) add down trim to increase the air speed.
Dick Huang:)

[Viper Pilot]

Originally posted by Dick Huang
fdisk,
There are two ways to penetrate head winds: 1) move the CG forward and 2) add down trim to increase the air speed.
Dick Huang:)

Third way (safer than first and second :D :D ) to penetrate headwinds . . . . increase torque.

VP

[Mike Taylor]

My flight instructor had me get into the same thing in a full-sized Cessna. It called 'being behind the curve'. You slow down too much, increase the angle of incidence relative to your forward motion, and keep the plane flying with throttle. There is a point where even full throttle will not keep the plane up. Your nose is up, power a full, and you're dropping like a rock. The ONLY solution is to lower the nose and pick up more speed to get the wing flying again. If you increase the available power, you will get slower (even hovering) flight, but at that point you are a helicopter, not an airplane...

[fdisk]

With my camera platform on lipolys I do loose to the wind a fair amount. Without the camera I can sit in the wind and hang in one place for a long time.

On a test pack of 8 nimh cells this weekend I pitched the nose up to near vertical and it just fought me in that one spot as I tried to keep the nose up and the wind tried to tip it over. It was almost a 1:1 vertical hover but wind/lift assisted. It was more like reeling in a fish. My fingers were real busy. Kinda fun--like when I first discovered horizontal hovering before it got annoying.

I guess I just need to learn a new level of control and paitence.

So do standard high wing trainers with flat or semi semetrical airfoils have like 2-5 degrees of positive incidence?

[vintage1]

Originally posted by Mike Taylor
My flight instructor had me get into the same thing in a full-sized Cessna. It called 'being behind the curve'. You slow down too much, increase the angle of incidence relative to your forward motion, and keep the plane flying with throttle. There is a point where even full throttle will not keep the plane up. Your nose is up, power a full, and you're dropping like a rock. The ONLY solution is to lower the nose and pick up more speed to get the wing flying again. If you increase the available power, you will get slower (even hovering) flight, but at that point you are a helicopter, not an airplane...

Thanks for that. I have a plane tht does that - it simply lacks the power to pull through to the better C/L ratios as well ahs having a big drag profile.

I've also noticed that with the picojet - it can fly very nose up with a quite a lot of power, but put the nose down and suddenly its going MUCH faster with LESS power.

[Karl B²]

Originally posted by Dick Huang
fdisk,
There are two ways to penetrate head winds: 1) move the CG forward and 2) add down trim to increase the air speed.
Dick Huang:)
That sounds like a good way to penetrate the upper few layers of the topsoil. :)

All other things equal at full throttle, I would think moving the CG forward and retrimming for level flight would increase drag and reduce the top speed, reducing "penetration."

I've played around at high alpha in strong winds, quite fun. I hovered towards myself until one wing entered my wind shadow, and down she cartwheeled. One thing to remember when powering out of this flight mode is to be prepared to ease off the elevator as you increase power, or the added propwash over the surfaces might give an unwanted hammerhead stall.

Karl

[fdisk]

"I hovered towards myself until one wing entered my wind shadow, and down she cartwheeled."


GOOD TIP! Thanks.