Originally Posted by bwill6

Spent about 4 hours on foil development and finally started to see some real improvement over existing series in the direction I want. Not without sacrifices, but hey, nothing's free. I'm looking at a pretty dang good root foil that has equal peak L/D to the Edge in cruise, and beats it by a decent margin at both higher and lower speeds, meaning it'll cover ground well in calm conditions while operating at minimum sink as well as being able to come back well from downwind thermals. It can take more camber and still retain a fairly broad range of efficiency, meaning it should behave better in turbulent thermals. Should make a great all-rounder kind of wing. The only place it suffers is at medium speeds in speed mode. Hoping to tackle that and improve it over the next week, but with as busy as I am with school Sundays are the only day I really end up with much time for this. Next comes the real fun - developing a tip foil that gets along well with this root...

How do you test the designs? Are they computer models or something?

To this point it's all computer modeling. Once I've found a good wing design I'll build it and test to see if the performance actually matches the model.

Got about 20 minutes in this afternoon before the storm rolled in and managed 2 1:00 flights. Glider's still flying great and it seems like I'm able to exploit lift better each time I go out.

I went to the field yesterday to practice tasks I can time with my TX timer and a talking timer; ie. 5 x 2, 3 x 3 , last flight 5 min, etc. Wish I could say I maxed every attempt-but that is why we practice isn't it? Went through through the cycle with two different planes which took about 3 hours. I left the field smiling, so it was a good day.

Dick

I flew my new X3 and it rocks She is beautiful

I practiced launching today. The sun had already set, but i still found lift on a basically flat field?? I didnt expect to find any. Also my elevator came loose twice- the nylon screw keeps coming out. How do i get it to stay in?

I have not tried this on a screw (it works on metal rods to increase friction). Apply just a small amount of bees wax to a couple of the threads of the screw. That might keep it tight.

Dick

Originally Posted by rcgeorge

I flew my new X3 and it rocks She is beautiful

That she it, Gerorge.... She's beautiful.

Originally Posted by jasonafriedman

I practiced launching today. The sun had already set, but i still found lift on a basically flat field?? I didnt expect to find any. Also my elevator came loose twice- the nylon screw keeps coming out. How do i get it to stay in?

Find a metal screw the same size and same thread. Run a little thin CA into the hole and thread the screw in. Once the CA sets, back the screw back out. You should now have slightly tighter threads.

Bench flying for me today, cold (58) windy and rainy.
Dave

I maidened my Binary 900.

First ever rc glider, first ever SAL and DLG launches. I was pretty anxious that it was going to end up as an expensive pile of fibreglass on the ground but it floated down to land incredibly gracefully!

I'm hooked, really surprised how easily it shot up into the air and how beautifully it glided down. Fantastic!

David what did you use for the boom?

Ryan

Ryan,
It's a Skyshark 32 1/2" 3PT http://www.awindofchange.com/mm5/mer...Category_Code=
on Allan Wright's recco, previous planes used an Avia Skinny SUL.
This will be my first pull-spring set up, if I can get the gear in this afternoon I'll see how it flies tomorrow.
Dave

First proper flying day in about 3 weeks even if it was a little windy. Took the Blaster to the Downs for a few hours of flying. Massive sink with very turbulent lift. Managed to core one of them up to just shy of 500ft. it was right overhead and directly into the sun so I punched out to save my neck and the glider.

Hi Justin, have you tried running "analyze dlg flights" in the downloader yet? You'll get to see your average, median, and max launch height, and it will adjust any pressure drift. - Chris