Skip to "TLDR" if you don't want any back story.
Skip to "I HATE READING" if that applies to you.
So this is my first summer in the hobby. I decided to give it a go over the winter and built one of these:
http://makezine.com/makerhangar/
I had zero success with it. No idea what my problem was, but in the end I pulled off everything that worked and trashed it.
Then I built a Nutball, Flyer and Delta. I became a capable-enough pilot with those designs.
Then I decided to just wing it (pun intended) and scratch build something with no plans. I stuck with the Armin wing of the maker plane but scrapped the folding design and went with a twin boom design similar to what I've seen on the interwebs elsewhere. I followed no plans, did no calculations of where what should be and how big. Here's what she looks like:
So it flies! Pretty well in my opinion. I had a blast yesterday with about 10 min flights on each of my 3 2200s.
TLDR
As I was flying by the seat of my pants building this plane, I decided to angle the wingtips up to emulate what I had seen on the Nutball and Flyer with their polyhedral and dihedral respectively. I had hoped it would add a bit of self-righting. Remember, new pilot and all, but I don't think it does much if anything.
So first day to the field behind my kid's school, I'm unloading and this guy pulls up on his motorcycle and starts talking about my design. I didn't ask for his qualifications but he spoke as if he knew a lot about the subject. He used all the terminology that I knew and then some. Overall, he liked my design with the exception of the tipped up wingtips.
Paraphrasing, probably unsatisfactorily, he said that since the leading edge of the wing was coplanar with the wing tips, that the wind would do funny things in that area. That if I were to move the angled tips back an inch or two, it would be better.
I HATE READING
Anyway, I don't know diddly about fluid dynamics so I'm inclined to take the guys word. He described the potential reaction of the plane, due to the angled wingtips, being a wiggling and I'm definitely seeing some, but want some additional opinions before I make any changes.
I'm also considering just hacking them off and losing the 9" off the overall 59" it's currently at. My first instinct would be that given the angle of those sections, they probably don't provide a whole lot of lift anyway and therefor would not be missed.
Skip to "I HATE READING" if that applies to you.
So this is my first summer in the hobby. I decided to give it a go over the winter and built one of these:
http://makezine.com/makerhangar/
I had zero success with it. No idea what my problem was, but in the end I pulled off everything that worked and trashed it.
Then I built a Nutball, Flyer and Delta. I became a capable-enough pilot with those designs.
Then I decided to just wing it (pun intended) and scratch build something with no plans. I stuck with the Armin wing of the maker plane but scrapped the folding design and went with a twin boom design similar to what I've seen on the interwebs elsewhere. I followed no plans, did no calculations of where what should be and how big. Here's what she looks like:
So it flies! Pretty well in my opinion. I had a blast yesterday with about 10 min flights on each of my 3 2200s.
TLDR
As I was flying by the seat of my pants building this plane, I decided to angle the wingtips up to emulate what I had seen on the Nutball and Flyer with their polyhedral and dihedral respectively. I had hoped it would add a bit of self-righting. Remember, new pilot and all, but I don't think it does much if anything.
So first day to the field behind my kid's school, I'm unloading and this guy pulls up on his motorcycle and starts talking about my design. I didn't ask for his qualifications but he spoke as if he knew a lot about the subject. He used all the terminology that I knew and then some. Overall, he liked my design with the exception of the tipped up wingtips.
Paraphrasing, probably unsatisfactorily, he said that since the leading edge of the wing was coplanar with the wing tips, that the wind would do funny things in that area. That if I were to move the angled tips back an inch or two, it would be better.
I HATE READING
Anyway, I don't know diddly about fluid dynamics so I'm inclined to take the guys word. He described the potential reaction of the plane, due to the angled wingtips, being a wiggling and I'm definitely seeing some, but want some additional opinions before I make any changes.
I'm also considering just hacking them off and losing the 9" off the overall 59" it's currently at. My first instinct would be that given the angle of those sections, they probably don't provide a whole lot of lift anyway and therefor would not be missed.