Design Concepts For Living Room Flyer Competition
Posted on October 26, 2009 by aaronredbaron
Scotty Bouck and I sat down today and discussed ideas for the living room flyer (LRF) design contest going on over at RCGroups. Click here to see my first article about this design contest. We went over control arrangements, material selection, and came up with several concepts. We both are going to be using Parkzone Ultra-Micro radio gear, and are attempting to build a model which can be flown proficiently in a 250 sq ft living room. The radio gear is going to be limited to a 3 channel setup, but the idea of using ailerons was tossed around; it was decided the model should have a rudder for several reasons. Any time the model is flying in high alpha flight, the rudder becomes critical for precise control, and we were hoping for good high alpha performance. Ailerons also add a fair amount of complexity and extra hardware.
We have to keep these models as light as possible to be any good for indoor flight. Its difficult to decide what material to use, the options are limited but there are a few choices. Balsa wood has been a a preferred choice for models for decades. Its still a good choice, but at this small scale, wood that is light enough is often very delicate. Carbon fiber rods and sheet foam, known as depron, are a good choice, but don’t always lend well to balsawood building concepts. Scotty drew several drafts of varies ideas. One theme keeps emerging in all his drawings; an undercamberd, straight leading edge, forward swept trailing edge wing, made of depron. Scott has used this wing concept before on a few models, and he is confident it will be good for this application. I wanted to do something a little more outside the box. My drawing is crude, but I am liking my concept. Its effectively a lifting fuselage with a polyhedral wing. The design looks funky, but I think it will work out nicely, and I like its funky nature. I’ll be picking up some building materials and putting this concept into action soon, stay tuned!
So after storming on this project for
12 hrs now, my thoughts are changing in some ways and the same in others. My first pictures that came to mind were tractor setups but considering the space to be flown in, for durability sake, a layout that offers a degree of protection for the prop is in order.
The airfoil/planform combo remains the choice for me, however a lighter construction method than 1mm depron plank would be good so I’m considering some film options.
As far as look goes, it’s going to be challenging to come up with somthing unique that still performs in these perameters.
This promisses to be a fun and rewarding project for all and I’m sure some very cool stuff will come from it.
Stay tuned….
GtrScotty.
I agree Scotty! I remember flying my indoor electric plane at Aaron’s old hanger and the prop assembly was it’s weak spot. Too many people demo flying and crashing into one thing or another and it just started to lose it’s front end symmetry and the prop started to go.
[...] Click here to see the follow up article on design concepts [...]