L Edge
Legendary member
I became interested in Blended Wing Bodies years ago and decided to build and fly one. Built symmetrical shape top and bottom and explored the flight envelope and this is what happened. Was putting into a vertical hover and decided to do differential thrust to see what happens.
After you do regular video speed, to clarify that the plane is spinning around like a pinwheel as it drops vertically, run the playback video at .25 rate and look at time of 2:50 and 3:10 and you actually watch the spin and see the rudders, than the nose and again the rudders, etc.. This was found by accident. My first run was lightly tail heavy, so I move the battery forward. Tried again, was blown away with what it can do. FT crew should build and demo this in a video. As you can see, recovery needs to be timed. Certainly it is chaotic tumbling in a dynamic stall.
So the question becomes, what happens if I provide an aft CG to the model? Did and took a flight, the net result backing of the power going to idle is that it went into somersaulting end over end on its sides on the way down. Just like when you were a kid and did card flipping. That is the result of the center of lift shifts violently away from the physical center of gravity. Easy maneuver to get out of. Lost video of the card flipping when computer died.
So next time you discuss about flat spins, you now can say you saw a BWB can do a vertical spin call the Pinwheel and do card flipping on its side.
After you do regular video speed, to clarify that the plane is spinning around like a pinwheel as it drops vertically, run the playback video at .25 rate and look at time of 2:50 and 3:10 and you actually watch the spin and see the rudders, than the nose and again the rudders, etc.. This was found by accident. My first run was lightly tail heavy, so I move the battery forward. Tried again, was blown away with what it can do. FT crew should build and demo this in a video. As you can see, recovery needs to be timed. Certainly it is chaotic tumbling in a dynamic stall.
So the question becomes, what happens if I provide an aft CG to the model? Did and took a flight, the net result backing of the power going to idle is that it went into somersaulting end over end on its sides on the way down. Just like when you were a kid and did card flipping. That is the result of the center of lift shifts violently away from the physical center of gravity. Easy maneuver to get out of. Lost video of the card flipping when computer died.
So next time you discuss about flat spins, you now can say you saw a BWB can do a vertical spin call the Pinwheel and do card flipping on its side.
