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- Jan 27, 2009
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I'm more worried about the lack of any shock absorbtion on the direct mounting to the spar/wing relying on perfect landings not to damage anything...he says if he tweaks it will be done.....
Oh no, he started the wing. I don't like it. Chord too small, way too thick. Is he going to stick aluminum tubes in those giant holes? Or just flimsy wood spars? Back to the drawing board, after some college, dude.
I think he really needs some help. Like a mentor.
Any volunteers?
Take a look at the 3 videos I posted of real electric planes, the best being the Pipistrel. Do their wings look anything like his? Gee, none are biplanes. Why do you think that is? BECAUSE THEY ARE OBSOLETE. Who needs all the struts and bracing wires. WAY DRAGGY.
The fat airfoil is very draggy, and unnecessary. Actually, for lift you don't even need an airfoil. I have seen model planes made of flat foam, the wings still generate lift. Why?
Because what they teach in school about there being a "low pressure area" on top of the wing that generates lift
IS WRONG.
Sure, there may be a low pressure zone, and airfoils help airflow and do improve lift, the FACT is that most of the lift is just from Newtons 3rd law. It is ANGLE OF ATTACK and the impingment of air on the tilted wing generating a lift vector.
Proof of this is the use of FLAPS on wings, what do you think that huge down angle does?????
I worked with Jerry Gregorek, aero prof at OSU, and another one at Penn State in the early days, learning practical skills
of aircraft construction. Something Peter is missing out on is PHYSICS. He will find as he winds up falling thru the sky at 32 feet per second per second that making a human carrying plane out of wood, foam, fiberglass, drawn on the back of a napkin, can be suicidal. He would be a lot smarter to at least make a wind tunnel, to test it, like the boys in Dayton did!
If you are so thrilled with Pete's project, why don't you contact him and offer some CAD documentation assistance. Then go on to Finite Element Analysis, and Computational Fluid Dynamics.
:roll:
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He mentioned in the above video that he removed it because it wasn't good but ALSO because he was unknowingly breaking rules by flying without strobes after dark. I didn't watch the livestream because it was so bad, but he mentions in the day flight video above that he's flying from a private strip. So, although I'm not a pilot, since that unlit, uncontrolled strip MIGHT have (one in a million) been used for an emergency landing by some other plane, even though the kid never flew high enough for other planes to have to worry about seeing him, strobes on his plane would have alerted the plane making the emergency landing that he was on the strip.I wondered what happend to the livestream, I was surprised he actually flew after dark, again it's an attitude thing with this guy. I'm glad it's intact, it's really underpowered, and he needs to address that, and hopefully his gear setup isn't an issue and that when actual aerodynamic loads/gusts etc happen it will hold together.
I'm a bit worried that his cavalier attitude will encourage others to do TLAR aircraft design, whether that is actually what he did, it gives that impression.
and I wish he'd put a helmet on, even a bicycle helmet.
Frank
He mentioned in the above video that he removed it because it wasn't good but ALSO because he was unknowingly breaking rules by flying without strobes after dark. I didn't watch the livestream because it was so bad, but he mentions in the day flight video above that he's flying from a private strip. So, although I'm not a pilot, since that unlit, uncontrolled strip MIGHT have (one in a million) been used for an emergency landing by some other plane, even though the kid never flew high enough for other planes to have to worry about seeing him, strobes on his plane would have alerted the plane making the emergency landing that he was on the strip.
Yeah, I was thinking that myself because even without knowing the actual rules, I could figure out why having strobes would have been a really good idea. He may have been working by this philosophy - "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." - Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, maybe not the best one when dealing with FAA safety rules. He said something like, "Please don't take my pilot's license" in the day flight video. Plus, one wouldn't think he'd put something on YouTube and then later delete it if he knew he was doing something wrong at the time.Yeah, I don't know about he didn't know, when I checked the rules last week, this is in the first couple of paragraphs, I would assume he did read those when trying to conform to the regulations, and I was thinking about that when he did the livestream that I watched....when they said they couldn't see much...
Yeah, I was thinking that myself because even without knowing the actual rules, I could figure out why having strobes would have been a really good idea. He may have been working by this philosophy - "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." - Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, maybe not the best one when dealing with FAA safety rules. He said something like, "Please don't take my pilot's license" in the day flight video. Plus, one wouldn't think he'd put something on YouTube and then later delete it if he knew he was doing something wrong at the time.
He mentioned he was under-propped for those motors, but I missed it if he's changed them yet. Has he? Also, he's under the best voltage for the motors, too, but he says he has the batteries on order. Those two improvements might give him significantly more thrust. Something that has made me cringe since day one has been the stubby landing gear supports with ZERO shock absorption.Yeah, it's a maturity and mindset of his approach that gets to me. If he had just said, yeah I got go fever, we've all been there, but if he is building something to a spec that he has to meet legally then he should have read the spec. On the powerplant side, I don't think he knows how much thrust his motors are delivering, or even calculated or have a swag on how much is required for flight. He was underpropped and just had a guy holding the plane in the basement to do a TLAR approach to enough power. It's just really a bad example, even if the end result happens to work or not. I mean I'm enjoying watching it as much as the next person, but I really hope I don't read about some kid killing himself trying to replicate it. People put illegal stupid crap on youtube all the time btw.
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