Long time RC pilot but new to ALES. I was wondering if anyone had any good suggestions for practice? What should the main focus be, good landings or completing the task?

Any set up tips would be appreciated as well. A question that comes to mind is aileron rudder mix, how much and in what modes?

Thanks for any help in advance. Trying to soak up as much info as I can.

Rod.

Originally Posted by Speed37

Long time RC pilot but new to ALES. I was wondering if anyone had any good suggestions for practice? What should the main focus be, good landings or completing the task?

Any set up tips would be appreciated as well. A question that comes to mind is aileron rudder mix, how much and in what modes?

Thanks for any help in advance. Trying to soak up as much info as I can.

Rod.

Landings and tasks, both. Of course. However, if you fly TD then you will have to get used to non dork landings. IMHO these can be a bit more difficult to get right as you do not have the advantage of that last second stab at the spot to stop you. Different fields will yield different landing conditions. More slide in shorter grass, more slide in wetter grass, and so on. There is quite a bit of a learning curve for this.

Aileron to rudder mix should help you get a smooth thermal turn with the fuse parallel to the ground. Tail down in the turn, more rudder in the mix, tail up in the turn, less rudder mixed in.

Pretty much it's just soaring except the winch is in the nose (WIN) instead of on the ground (WOG).

Practice with your limiter (CAM is a good one). This will help you learn how to anticipate the max altitude cut off and how to fly your plane as you approach that point without stalling out (not a good thing). Let's say you reach 200 meters in 25 seconds (after measuring several flights). This information will allow to develop your own strategy for how you want to handle motor cut off without stalling.

Welcome to the fray. It's a lot of fun.

Preston

Rod,

First go here: http://tailwindgliders.com/Tips.html and read, memorize and fully understand: "The Third Vector".
Then read "Where to Fly" and "CG Position".

Also make a practice landing tape. I only use a one meter tape for practice. Then get a timer. I have a free mp3 file I put on my iPhone that has 10, 5, 3, and 1 minute tasks. It's available here: http://tailwindgliders.com/Files.html#Files Scroll down the page a bit.

To practice have your model ready to fly, start the timer than off you go on your task. During a practice session I may do one task of each but then at the end of the practice session I may do a half dozen 1 minute tasks, just a short motor run and then setup for landing. This is specifically for landing practice.

Then get with me and we'll do some flying! If you let me watch you fly your model and also allow me a flight or two I can help with getting the control throws setup. Not so much as if it's too sensitive or not but if there is enough rudder mix with the ailerons and also I can get the balance point pretty darn close. Also, getting the elevator compensation to flaps is real important too.

After this, it's all about practice, practice and more practice. The more often you fly in differing weather conditions the better you'll be. I'm not sure what your schedule will be but I'm either available or not and I have no idea when that is, as I'm on call with a 1.5 hour call out time. Last month I've been slammed with work, but haven't worked this week at all. Go figure. So just email or call and if I'm not working we'll go fly!

Looking forward to having you around.

Curtis

Hi Curtis, We have had the pleasure of Glen Pedens company this last weekend. As usual he won our 5th event with his Grafas. He is pretty good with that machine !!. He telles me he will be attending your next event. It will be interesting to see if he cleans up at your do.He is coming to our last competition in October. That makes his 5 for the league.Aftre watching him win our last three events, I am now going to put flaps on my next ALES glider instead of spoilers. They sure take the uncertainty out of the landings.We have had a good year with our ALES, and have been very lucky with the weather too. I am already looking forward to next years ALES. We look to be adding three new fliers next month. We can then fly three rounds of 4, give us more of a break.
I hope you and Glen have a real battle. Ken.

Ken,

I am excited about Glen coming to see us. I have never met Glen in person but he was instrumental eight years ago or so in helping me learn how to setup a Logo 10 helicopter. I'd seen he had gotten bitten by the glider bug and when he emailed seeing about visiting us for a contest I was ecstatic! He can have any medal he wants as long as it's one below mine!

Curtis

Originally Posted by Speed37

Long time RC pilot but new to ALES. I was wondering if anyone had any good suggestions for practice? What should the main focus be, good landings or completing the task?

Any set up tips would be appreciated as well. A question that comes to mind is aileron rudder mix, how much and in what modes?

Thanks for any help in advance. Trying to soak up as much info as I can.

Rod.

Paul Naton still has a good deal going on his Electric Sailplanes 1 and 2 DVD'S.

They are excellent instructional DVDs.... lots and lots of great information.

WWW.radiocarbonart.com

Thanks for all the info guys! I didn't get back in here as soon as I would have liked. Been a bit busy lately, sorry.

I read all that you suggested Curtis, thank you. The mp3 file seems to be an excelent tool to train with, already have it downloaded to the iphone

I'd be happy to let you checkout my airplane,but unsure when that might be. I guess you know my situation at the moment. I really would like to make the Billings contest as well. Unfortunately it's not going to happen. The Helena contest should be no problem, knock on wood.

Thanks again, the help is appreciated greatly.

Geez, after that setup, I am so going to crash and burn now Curtis But having a nice performing glider setup to stop on a dime with crow - one that you are sufficiently familiar with certainly gives one a chance.

It sure is thrilling to know that you have to find lift to recover from a poor flight thus far and make it to 10 minutes and beat the guy that's higher than you - and to actually do so under the pressure of even a friendly competition. I need tutoring or more experience with recognizing where to dash for the lift It's comforting to have a good idea of how high you have to be at one and two minutes because of previous practice.

Back when I was preoccupied with heli's I had no clue about how challenging and fun this stuff was - used to think it would be quite boring

Cheers!
Glen

Curtis, totally missed the PM

Had myself a lesson today in preparation for the upcoming contest. (thanks for that Curtis) I've got a long way to go yet. What a beautiful place to fly.

Here are some suggestions on things to practice:

1) Practice making turns with the wings flat (horizontal) as possible. You do not want to make the turn so tight that the wings are not well exposed to the up draft of the thermal. I use rudder to turn into the thermal and occasional opposite aileron to keep the wings level. It depends on how the plane handles as to what works best.

2) Watch to see when the plane is not loosing altitude. That means you may be in a thermal but it isn't a hat sucker. Then go into a thermal turn and be very patient. As long as you are maintaining your altitude you are golden. It took me a long time to understand how to work light thermals. I was always looking for that hat sucker and missed out on that thermal that was just building up but that was good enough to get a max.

3) When you are settled in that light thermal, explore the air around you. Maintaining the thermal turn, fly up wind, down wind, left and right by 50 or 100 feet to find the strongest part of the thermal. Patience is key...

4) When at a contest have an experienced pilot time for you. He'll point out little things that you won't really notice at first but that will make a difference in your flights.

5) I have 4 flight modes, Normal (aileron to rudder mix), thermal (Normal + a little camber in flap and aileron), thermal 2 (normal + mix camber with up elevator), speed (a little reflex in flap and aileron). Mostly I stay in normal mode and just fly the thermal by hand. I just started using speed mode a few years ago. You can set that up once you have more stick time on a glider. Speed mode isn't really fast. It just helps to penetrate up wind.

I love this glider stuff...

Aurele

Originally Posted by aalain999111

1) Practice making turns with the wings flat (horizontal) as possible.

I love this glider stuff...

I totally agree with Aurele, especially the last statement!

However, I don't agree with flying flat, well unless we're saying the same thing but just in a different way. If you have lots of dihedral say an EDA great than 10 degrees that may be true, as then it's just a polyhedral plane. The Pulsar has a very flat wing, I haven't calculated it but I bet the EDA is closer to 3 degrees. This requires a coordinated turn using ailerons and rudder to counteract the adverse yaw that is there. I'd make sure my down aileron is much less than my up aileron.

All planes will have a certain bank angle that when too steep will require opposite aileron to maintain that specified bank angle and altitude. With a lower bank angle the model will tend to roll to level flight, but at one certain bank angle the model will maintain that bank quite well with limited pilot input.

I've attached a .pdf file from full scale soaring that will baffle us all with technical numbers.

Curtis
Montana

CoudyIFR,

Interesting article... Perhaps I should rethink some of my techniques though I do use tighter turns once I have cored a good thermal. I'll have to try the 45 degree angle approach next time out in light lift.

Aurele

Thanks for the light air tips Aurele.
I really need to work on my light air flying.

Your skills flying light air are legendary at Polecat.

Your best practice friend is a talking timer.

If you are working landings, set it for 2 minutes. Launch and work on prep for landings. This way you get the set-up time and the approach time and learn to time the landing as well as hitting the mark.

If you are working on thermal soaring set it for 12-15 minutes, work your thermals, then land using the landing practiece from above observing set-up time and the approach time and learn to time the landing as well as hitting the mark.

If you want to get serious always have a landing target and always work against the clock. This would be true for ALES or any type of thermal soaring.

Talking Timer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ref=pd_rate_rs