Originally posted by Micromister
darn: your thread heading got my hopes up
I just love night flight vehicles.. if flown under a full night launch FAA waiver of coarse.
Very nice designs Dyna:
would you expand some on the Physics your studying? Drag/transition effect?
Clustering is my second favorite type of flying, and Cluster/altitiude is my 3rd favorite competition, preceeded by Scale and PMC in that order
The Dreamcatcher transition is most elegant, very nicely done.
These all look like Excellant sport flying models.
Competition however? Looking at the 18mm model, I'm wondering what particular event you think this configuration my be competitive in? Do you plain on using a 24mm nose on the model?
Three motors Cluster altitlude event will be 3 - 1/2A (13mm motors) well, I guess it's possible to use 3 - 18mm 1/2A6-2 motors but the self imposed casing weight penelty would make this configuration pretty much useless. Add to that a huge diameter 24mm nose or shroud will drastically reduce possilble maximum altitude especially in this motor class.
Have you had a chance to flight test and track any of these designs? I'm sure you will see first hand how the various types of drag effect these designs.
For this motor class you may want to look at in-line body configurations. flight test have proven they out preform stacked tube models by a great margin. Here's a pic of a few of the 10 designs flight tested before NARAM-35 3x1/2A clu/alt. If I were flying 3x1/2A today it would be an even more elegant design. I'll post the 3x1/8A Micro-Maxx prototype in the next post.
Hope it's helpful.
Your group are very cool Cluster models though.
Well, the name came about because I named the first one for Sandman, who turned that transition for me and helped with the mating design. I just carried on with the night/sleep idea after that.
I *am* looking for some strong clear tubes for flying strobes for night flight. White LEDs are bright enough now and low power enough.
I'm also waiting on some thin-film solar panels to experiment with powering electronics off them.
I'm looking at which transition has the least drag (cross-section and drag characteristics), but also testing their integrity, including glues. Frinstance, would the 4-cones transition stand up to equivalent of H power, with a payload vibrating above it? Same with the various fins. I'll probably end up with some destructive testing, but I'm trying to squeeze all I can out of LPR techniques rather than just assuming mid and high power require extensive changes. Sure, I'm out voted by 20 years of HPR flyers. But I'm a scientist -- can't tell us nuthin, we got to see it ourselves.
I am looking at cluster altitude with the 18mm at least. Three AT D21's would put it in the E engine equivalent category. There's no cluster altitude records for Class C (adult) above engine class C. The trick will be getting it back. For the nose, I'll be doing the same carving down of a nose and gluing od blocks or couplers, for a BT60 size this time.
I'll defininitely look into in-line vs. stacked, thanks. I can't see why an inline would be better yet, but as I said, I rely on data. Perhaps stacked isn't optimal for contest. Still, competition is secondary here. The whole project began in order to scale up the design and test the various technologies in real comparisons. I want to build the best by finding out what's good enough rather than going for what's better is some respects, but probably not in others (ie. total weight of glue used of wood glue vs. epoxy. Sure epoxy is better, but do I end up using twice the weight and overbuild, when half the weight of yellow stuff would be adequate?).
