Originally Posted by awilmunder

I was reading a thread that brought up this issue. I believe it was in the UK that some are flying with a limiter that monitors your climb rate and rather than cutting you off at a given height, cuts you off so you will arrive at that given altitude.

I think that what we will see over the next few years will be a wide variety of innovation in attempts to develop the ideal ALES plane. I had originally thought that an electrified moldie would be great, but why fly a plane with a wing spar designed to withstand a full zoom launch when an ALES plane doesn't require it. Ultra light airframes may be what we see with the ability to ballast as necessary. I was wondering about a giant 'Penny' light plane. The ALES rules even allow variable geometry, so you could have very fragile wings that extend after launch.

Innovation is good, and it won't surprise me to find that in a few years, an ALES plane bears little in common with a current TD plane. I'm just happy to be involved at the beginning so we can watch what happens.

Hi Aric,

Well, a glider with a 5 kW motor on the nose that powers up to 190 meters in 10 seconds, then dives to 20 meters in a power dive, pulls up at some optimum angle under full power until 200M altitude and 175 mph at motor shut off, surely would need a strong airplane and at the resulting extreme zoomed altitude, it would not have to be light to get 10 minutes. I submit that this approach is not in the spirit of the ALES as we practice it. But perfectly legal.

Jonathan

I had a F5B Surprise 13 that would zoom to eye busting altitude in seconds. You could catch a 10 minute flight here and there if you were lucky, but having to do it in all four rounds when the announcer says launch, not very likely. We already have some pretty efficient planes in the Ava Pro E class type that will be as successful as anything IMHO. Time will tell, but an Explorer 4.0 E or Supra E might be the ticket when the wind kicks up a little. So far the contest days have been relatively calm, warm, and sunny. It will be interesting to see what works when the conditions are a little sketchy. Time will tell.

Originally Posted by SlopeRC

I had a F5B Surprise 13 that would zoom to eye busting altitude in seconds. You could catch a 10 minute flight here and there if you were lucky, but having to do it in all four rounds when the announcer says launch, not very likely. We already have some pretty efficient planes in the Ava Pro E class type that will be as successful as anything IMHO. Time will tell, but an Explorer 4.0 E or Supra E might be the ticket when the wind kicks up a little. So far the contest days have been relatively calm, warm, and sunny. It will be interesting to see what works when the conditions are a little sketchy. Time will tell.

According to internet discussions the 600 sec duration task is routinely achieved, at least at the international competition level. I quote:

"Importance of Duration and Landing task
F5B is known for its high-speed flying of distance task, but the competition is won by the combined total of three tasks (distance, duration, and landing) so don't take these other two tasks lightly.
Compared to the distance task, the duration task is relatively easy to score maximum points. Almost everyone scores within a few points of the maximum 600 points and also gets landing bonus points."

quoted form here:
http://www.airplanemaniac.com/english7.html

My point: An f5b with a top notch pilot at the helm will always win at the ALES 10 minute task. But I don't think it is a soaring contest anymore. It is getting awfully close to a rocket with a paraglider style parachute. To heck with an F5b plane. Lets go with rockets and an rc pop out rc paraglider for a controlled return. This is not soaring! I would far prefer the Explorer or Supra. But I could still put a 5kW motor on either of them and smash you all even though I am not a good pilot.

So how about restricting the power of the airframe to a certain number of watts per pound? This is something one can easily manage and enforce within certain tolerances. For example my F5B airframes produce about 1500 watts per pound and my F5J setup has about 600 watts per pound. I agree that with the current intent and vision of ALES both do not belong in that category unless you start grouping them based on climb performance.

I have two ALES airframes that produce about 75-100 watts per pound which is plenty for getting up to 200m in about 20 seconds. So how about restricting the amount of power based on weight?

Just a thought.

Re: more powerful E-planes being an unfair advantage in competition, the same argument can be made for TD planes now-adays. From personal experience the latest (and most expensive) designs have a clear advantage over others. I think thoughtful application of flying classes is the way to sort all this out. Unfortunately it may require more verification time and overhead for the CD and his/her team.

Originally Posted by Highfly!

So how about restricting the power of the airframe to a certain number of watts per pound? This is something one can easily manage and enforce within certain tolerances. For example my F5B airframes produce about 1500 watts per pound and my F5J setup has about 600 watts per pound. I agree that with the current intent and vision of ALES both do not belong in that category unless you start grouping them based on climb performance.

I have two ALES airframes that produce about 75-100 watts per pound which is plenty for getting up to 200m in about 20 seconds. So how about restricting the amount of power based on weight?

Just a thought.

This would definitely help and something like this is necessary in my opinion. The equivalent leveler in TD is that we all use basically the same winch and in F3J there is a line length limit and the 10 minute time window forces one to shorter and shorter time on the tow.

Of course in TD someone will certainly come up with a new monster winch that uses modern motors and controllers and we might ultimately have to limit the winch power as well as is done in F3b. And, F3J has gone to quite an extreme too. JW talks about 120 lb tension he holds off for his sub one second launches. Still one must do 10 min and 15 min of soaring off of that 1 sec launch which is not very high if my view of Utube films of JW launching at the worlds is correct.

The latest revision of the ALES rules, submitted to the AMA last fall, will have an anti-zooming stipulation where zooming is defined as turning excess kinetic energy into altitude after motor cutoff. Details will be available when the rules are made public.

Randy

Originally Posted by rcbrust

The latest revision of the ALES rules will have an anti-zooming stipulation where zooming is defined as turning excess kinetic energy into altitude after motor cutoff. Details will be available when the rules are made public.

Randy

Problem solved. Thanks

JPH

"Do not hesitate to turn on the motor during the duration task. " this quote from the article reminds me that in F5B they turn the motor on as neccessary to stay up for 10 minutes. There is a deduction for time the motor is on but clearly different than one blast to 200M. Granted a few seconds can take it up hundreds of feet, but in ALES you cannot relight the motor without a DQ round.

Originally Posted by SlopeRC

"Do not hesitate to turn on the motor during the duration task. " this quote from the article reminds me that in F5B they turn the motor on as neccessary to stay up for 10 minutes. There is a deduction for time the motor is on but clearly different than one blast to 200M. Granted a few seconds can take it up hundreds of feet, but in ALES you cannot relight the motor without a DQ round.

I argue that it is not very different because they have a total energy constraint. In the practice session I saw, one of the team members ran out of gas during the distance portion of the event and had no energy left to climb into the soaring portion. Perhaps that was a fluke, but it does show that the total stored energy budget in F5b needs to be portioned out carefully and if one has one 10 sec climb left or 2, 5 sec climbs, it does not matter much. However, if an F5b were to enter an ALES contest, since it has no worries of use of energy in a distance portion of the event, the F5b plane can still hit the 200M mark at 150 mph and zoom to such an altitude that a 10 minute glide is easy. If it is easy (as commented above) in an F5b event it will be much easier in an ALES contest.

This is why I welcome the comment above to diasallow a zoom in ALES. I am glad that the powers that be have addressed the concern I have been laying out here in the SVSS group.

So how will I notice that the power system was switched off by the limiter when doing a power climb to 200m? With low power systems the switch off is very easy to see but I could never notice it with my high power setup until I was way over the altitude limit.

I tested this a while back on one of my high power setups and noticed the loss of power only after gaining another 100 feet or more. With a F5B setup I bet you that it will go way higher than that without the pilot noticing that the limiter has kicked in.

Originally Posted by Highfly!

So how will I notice that the power system was switched off by the limiter when doing a power climb to 200m? With low power systems the switch off is very easy to see but I could never notice it with my high power setup until I was way over the altitude limit.

I tested this a while back on one of my high power setups and noticed the loss of power only after gaining another 100 feet or more. With a F5B setup I bet you that it will go way higher than that without the pilot noticing that the limiter has kicked in.

Agreed. Implementing an effective no zoom rule will be a challenge.