Pilots’ Briefing at 1135 hrs in Walter Beech Hall
Event will be non-competitive glider evaluation. Just fly all the gliders you want to, and fill out an evaluation for each one. Evaluation forms will be provided. You may also evaluate based on past experience if there are “too many gliders, too little time” to fly each one at this meet.
Our goal is to collect at least 3 evaluations per glider.
All participants will receive 5 season points.
This will probably be the only race in March, due to work commitments. That leaves April and the first part of May to wrap up the season with a few more races.
Equipment Update:
We’ve received 4 very light foam flying wings from Michael Thompson in Wisconsin. Preliminary trials indicate these are very slow and easy to fly. Neat configurations too!
The GC has built a new stick-and-tissue version of the Z-Surfer, a (usually foam) flying wing by Phil Rossini of Boston (who in turn based it on the designs of the originators of the whole walkalong concept, Tyler and Parker MacCready and their colleagues at AeroVironment). This is about as slow as a Club Racer but has better L/D, so it takes lest draft to keep it up. I can maintain altitude with hands only, although I haven’t been able to regain it if anything goes wrong.
Cool stuff around the world:
Check this out for some cool text, pictures, and links:
http://www.oyajin.jp/~toko/eplane/hangflygarn/01/index.html
The pdf link goes to a plan for a simple but very light stick-and-tissue (or stick-and-microfilm) flying wing.
The “Jonas Romblad” link goes to a video of the same aircraft being flown very well, with hands only (presumably by Jonas Romblad, the designer?) Much lighter and slower than our gliders to date. I’ll talk to the design engineers about getting some weight out of our future aircraft.
All of this goes to show that several folks in various locations have developed gliders that are as easy, or easier, to fly than our very best. Hats off to Mike Thompson, Phil Rossini, Jonas Romblad, the MacCreadys, and others as yet unknown to us who have contributed to developments in this field!
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