Longest Flight possible with a plane.

vannatta20

Junior Member
Love to see how long you guys could keep a plane up in the air. Lots of design considerations would make the show very interesting.
 

Tritium

Amateur Extra Class K5TWM
They would probably bring David Windestål ;) who can fly a powered glider for HOURS! Problem is the show is usually 10 minutes or less.

Thurmond
 
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earthsciteach

Moderator
Moderator
I was watching videos of David flying DLG's on his site this morning. Man, those things are COOL! But they can be horribly expensive! I saw one advertised for the low, low price of $999.00. No doubt you can find them for much less money. I'd love to have a go at one!
 

Ak Flyer

Fly the wings off
Mentor
A friend of mine has a wing that he added a bunch of batteries to and they took turns flying it for over an hour and said they had lots left. They stopped because they were bored.
 

lobstermash

Propaganda machine
Mentor
Yeah, slope soaring you can fly until the wind stops or you get bored. On a calm, sunny day in the warmer months, you can thermal for ages.
 

Ak Flyer

Fly the wings off
Mentor
Seems like fun. I know that all the rc speed records are held by slope soaring planes.
 

vannatta20

Junior Member
I would like to see the challenge done where they normally fly. I would like to know what setup would be needed for a 1 hour flight.
 

lobstermash

Propaganda machine
Mentor
Sure. 5000mah 3s in the Bixler would do the job on about half throttle.

I've just inherited a Decathlon into which I've stuck a 2200 3s. It flies for about 25 minutes of normal aerobatic parkflier fun. Unfortunately that's a long time and near the end you're hanging out to hear that low battery beep to be honest...
 

pgerts

Old age member
Mentor
The most impressive non stop flight with a model i know is a flight from USA to UK.
Controlled with the radio just om start an landing but getting the fuel to last the distance is most impressive.
 

UndCon

UndCon
Cool info - thx for the links.

One of the members of my first RC-club was a true pioneer
 
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That actually brings up an interesting "challenge".
Across the ocean is pretty ambitious, but I'd love to try to setup a place with an AP (DIYDrones) and program in something like take off from my house and fly these waypoints landing at x.

It would be fun to do the "flight planning" with winds aloft and battery capacity etc.

How far could you get the plane to go would only be one small part of the challenge - accurately predicting the speed using winds aloft, how long will it take for the plane to get to it's destination and/or how much juice would be left over if you had a designated landing point.
I remember once doing a flight from Ottawa to Sarnia Ontario where I has planned x minutes from wheels up to wheels down (actually it may have been from engine start to wheels down) and it turned out I was dead on to the exact minute. The sense of accomplishment came from the accuracy not the flight. Of course it's easier to plan for a destination airport where you're not expecting to get vectored around. I admit - that level of accuracy has equal portions of planning and luck attributed to its success but still - I like to think I had something to do with it ;-)

That's pretty progressive - I have never heard of anyone trying something like this with an RC. Of course - there are probably laws in place to prevent someone from legally trying that in some countries.