@Screwball - Awesome stuff indeed - I wonder if the speed is related to the size and weight - if it was bigger using the same power plant it might float more?
I'm smellin' what your steppin' in, brother.*
This plane's cubic wing loading is a ridiculously low 2.9, which puts her in the range of indoor fliers and thermal-catching gliders, so
theoretically she IS a floater. I personally can attest to her being
in practice** capable of level flight at speeds so slow they approach (what comedian Ron White called) the Speed of Smell. So, we're good on weight/size. My stumbling block is controlling the available power.
The current power configuration generates about 300 g of thrust, which in this case is a (expletive deleted) lot. On the scale, ready-to-fly, she comes in at just under 200 g, so we're looking at a thrust/weight ratio of 1.5:1 (think 3-D, unlimited vertical, screaming jets, etc.) It's an odd couple -the screaming floater- but it can work. If I had a bit more finesse in my left thumb it could work quite well.
Wind gusts will always be the Achilles heel of any lightly-loaded plane, but -given enough reserve power and the skill to use it judiciously- a quick blast on the throttle can go a long way toward smoothing out almost any rough air. Reserve power I got in spades; a lock-picker's touch... not so much (not yet, anyway). Anything over half-throttle on this bird is overkill for my park-flier puttering. This cuts my safe control stick resolution in half, and leaves all kinds of head-room above that for me to wander into trouble REAL quick (as the videos above clearly show).
My near-term training plan is to either program a sensible rev-limiter into my throttle curve, or go with a lower-voltage battery. Either one would produce the same net effect: Keeping me off the highway to the danger-zone, as it were. Your proposed solution would also produce the same net-effect. Increasing the size and weight (while maintaining the lift/weight ratio) and keeping thrust/weight constant would
in theory produce the same effect as decreasing the excess thrust inflicted on the current airframe. The major caveat here being that
in practice bigger really does fly better (because air molecules don't scale). In that sense your solution... ummm... makes more sense, and explains why my old 4X version is just easier to fly and more forgiving than this new 3X version.
That Reynolds fella sure did know some stuff...
*I picked that phrase up from a young lady I used to run around with, when I was also a young man (which feels like a looooong time ago). I met her in a Karaoke bar, in Kentucky. These facts notwithstanding she was a nice girl. No. Really. She was.
**
In Theory, theory and practice are the same. However, I have found that
in Practice they are not.
