Soaring with a Smash Drone.

by alibopo | October 29, 2013 | (0) Posted in Just Fun

Autumn's well on its way and the air's getting cooler. The Smash Drone copes well with a payload of 2 x 850mah S3 Lipos and is great fun to fly in the breeze. You've got to love this Old Fogey wing.

Oh yes, and catch the fly dance at 41secs :)

UPDATE - 29/08/2014 -  I reviewed this article and realised I had using the wrong term when describing the modification to the wing. I was using Angle of Attack instead of Angle of Incidence. Angle of Attack refers to the angle that the wind is striking the wing and is influenced by the attitude of the whole aircraft in flight. Angle of Incidence is the difference between the straight line (baseline), which the horizontal stabiliser 'projects' along the fuselage, and the angle of the wing to this baseline. Some planes have zero Angle of Incidence, ranging through to quite high (10 degrees or more) for extremely slow flyers. For faster moving planes the Angle of Incidence is generally only a few degrees. You'll spot those 'incorrect' terms in the video. Apologies to all!

UPDATE - 31/08/2016 - I've explored this topic of Angle of Incidence more recently, both from research and from experimenting with builds. The conclusion I've come to is that for most model planes, no more than 2 degrees Angle of Incidence is required for the vast majority of more modern designs. This actually led me to reduce the 'real life' Angle of Incidence on model versions of biplanes I designed - why? Because with the 'real life' angle, the wings produced too much lift, which needed to be countered by negative inputs like excessive down elevator, or a steep downward thrust angle on the motor. Basically the plane was fighting itself - one part trying to lift the plane, the other part trying to keep it level - it was a waste of battery power that could be used to keep the plane flying longer.

COMMENTS

sailorJohn on November 7, 2013
Nice build, good to see the build perform.
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alibopo on November 7, 2013
Hi, and thanks for that. :)
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Soaring with a Smash Drone.