Aircraft design has evolved quite a bit since the golden era of flight. In the past, engineers dreamt up some pretty hillarious planes by moden standards.
Our favorite failure by far is this plane. This design is the go-to example for humans attempting to conquer the skies...and how difficult it ended up being.
The maiden of the Gerhardt Cycleplane has been referenced in countless movies and TV shows.
This sparked Peter's interest. Could this crazy contraption actually make it into the air?
To find out, he built one! #becauseflitetest
This small scale replica is made from 10 copies of the same wing. The secret, Peter found, is there also needs to be a motor at the top of the wings.
We actually maidened this over a livestream app we've been using recently called Periscope.
Periscope sends a message through our Twitter feed whenever we start streaming and you can watch the feed live! We do all kinds of weird behind-the-scenes stuff, so check it out!
Believe it or not this actually flew! In hindsight, Peter realized he could have thrown in some mixing to help adjust with the pitch; a lesson learned and applied to the full project.
Flite Fest 2014 brought about a collection of unique monster planes. It was only obvious that we had to out do ourselves at Flite Fest 2015!
Armed with his knowledge from the small scale multiplane, Peter came to Flite Fest ready to put some ambitious builders to work.
The wings themselves are not complicated. There are just a lot of them!
A basic box spar and simple fold techniques.
The final design had 6 motors total. 3 pairs of random giant E-maxs' placed on the bottom, middle, and top of the wing stack.
Too bad they didn't think about how to get it out of the hangar!
Now to answer the question, will it fly?
Success!
This project wouldn't have been possible without the help of all the kids who built it. You know who you are, and we thank you!
We can only hope that next year, we have something even bigger and/or crazier for you guys to build.
A special thanks also goes to David and Josh for helping us with the air-to-air footage for this episode. The talent in this community continues to amaze us. Keep it up guys!
Here are some funky airframes I'd love to see flite-tested!
The asymmetrical winged AD-1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_AD-1
The world's smallest jet, the BD-5 in any variant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede_BD-5
A wing-in-ground-effect vehicle like the Caspian Sea Monster: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea_Monster
Or the Unversal Hoverwing: http://hovercraft.com/content/index....ndex&cPath=1_2
The plane from the worst Mad Max movie (Thunderdome), the PL-12 Airtruk: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transavia_PL-12_Airtruk
Thanks for checking these out!
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Can you build a plane that can take off and land both normally and upside-down? (Most likely)
Can you actually take off and land it upside-down? (Harder)
How about something that takes off or lands on any side? Flying cube?
Thanks for the continued entertainment!
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Once again, kudos to Peter and the build team. You all gave us quite a thrill!
Gryf - See more at: http://www.flitetest.com/articles/will-it-fly-multiplane-decaplane#sthash.pdiFjlM8.dpuf
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http://forum.flitetest.com/showthread.php?20583-Ornothopter-by-Peter&p=217878#post217878
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http://blog.modernmechanix.com/cylinders-replace-wings-in-plane/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnGZBhrrlMk
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I like some of the ideas that have already been suggested (like the ornithopter ... that's a great challenge). I'd also propose you tackle something like making a Magnus Effect wing (generates lift by spinning a cylinder on its axis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect) or an homage to the GL-10 50% scale testbed that NASA has flown - video: https://youtu.be/kXql26sF5uc ... wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_GL-10_Greased_Lightning ...
Hopefully the GL-10 isn't too much like Peter's first FT build, the X-19 (https://youtu.be/yfJWWzg5LeM) ... hope to see more of this kind of stuff, the "will it fly" episodes and the "challenge" episodes are great stuff. Thanks for all you do here, fellas!!
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