Bungie launcher for wings???

[The Predator]

Guys, does anyone have a line on where I can find one of these launchers? I heard of a special setup with a little cage like thingie that fits around a wing, so no tow hook needed, and it gives them a big enough toss for flat land thermal action. I recently flew with a gentle lady and I was EASILY able to out thermal it so, I think this would be GREAT for flat landers learning to thermal AND leanring to land!
Thanks, Karl

[lincoln]

I think if you were significantly out thermaling a Gentle Lady then you probably were flying much better. The Gentle Lady doesn't come down very fast. Maybe you come down slower, but there isn't much room to come down a lot slower unless your plane is lighter than air or the Gentle Lady is not well made or is poorly flown.

I've taped tow hooks on the front of flying wings and done a kinetic launch. Kind of fun.

[The Predator]

Have you flown a Predator Bee Lincoln? I likely did out fly the Lady but, I do not think his sink rate was any better and the Lady was WAY less agile. Terrible search speed/glide slope for hunting lift too. A light Predator Bee is pretty amazing. We thremal them ALOT during LOW distant saves from a 1000 ft away, 500 ft+ down on our mainly thermal slope. Magic place!

[O.L. Adcock]

That must be why you see so many flying wings in full size sailplane competitions! :)....O.L.

[lincoln]

I agree that the Gentle Lady doesn't have a wide speed range. But we weren't talking about that. And I allowed as you might get someplace near his sink range. I haven't yet flown a flying wing that thermalled well, but I'm not saying it's impossible.

In the full scale world, there are other factors. Say you are a moderately small organization. You want to build a glider that will sell, you want to make sure it doesn't take a huge effort to develop, you don't want to have to make a big marketing effort, and you want to minimize risk. THe Genesis, if I understand correctly, was a pretty fair performer, but didn't really succeed. There's another one made by one of those German schools which is a good performer but said to be a bear to fly. Looks like an egg mating with a boomerang.

IN the homebuilt world, there are a couple of flying wings that are popular and seem to fly fine. I have personally watched (ok, not every minute) a homebuilt flying wing sailplane (a Marske, forget the name, Pioneer??) stay up for two or three hours just putting around near Harris Hill.

Back just before WW2, the Horten 3 was one of the best competitive sailplanes. But that's a pretty tough configuration to engineer. Maybe easier with today's software. But you have to engineer the customers too. Note the the Horten and the Marske represent two very different approaches which have worked well.

Put in the right kind of electronics and I bet the flying wing with an aft cg becomes impossible to beat.

[histarter]

That must be why you see so many flying wings in full size sailplane competitions! :)....O.L.
Excellant! :cool:

I love wings but am always bothered by the basic facts.

1. Wings are limited by CL (approx 1/2 that of conventional profiles).
2. So the lighter wing has to fly at the same airspeed as conventional for competitive thermalling, meaning low camber is a must.
3. Trailing edge control means slower flight is attempting to occur at even less MCL. :eek:

Meaning they are fast or faster when operated correctly - because slow flight typically equals mushy high sink! Basically a good pilot has be better at it to be successful competing using the wing design. ;)

[O.L. Adcock]

Predator, I apologize for being a wise a$$...I just keep seeing threads about flying wings in the "thermal" forum when the reality is they are very poor at thermaling for the reasons Histarter points out. They have their place and are interesting to play with however. I'm sure a good wing can match a poor conventional, especially when you mix in pilot skills. as for the launching, I'm sure a "bridle" of some type could be rigged up to do the job. Maybe 2 tow hooks out board in the wing with a Y with 2 rings on the histart??....O.L.