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- Newsgroups: rec.models.rc
- Subject: Re: More R/C Gliding........
- Message-ID: <1992Jul23.220857.6043@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>
- From: kaiser@elec.canterbury.ac.nz (Chris Kaiser)
- Date: 23 Jul 92 22:08:56 +1200
- References: <1992Jul18.214223.1@cc.curtin.edu.au> <1992Jul22.233354.6431@rtsg.mot.com>
- Distribution: world
- Organization: Electrical Engineering, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
- Nntp-Posting-Host: 132.181.50.18
- Lines: 32
-
- In article <1992Jul22.233354.6431@rtsg.mot.com>, svoboda@rtsg.mot.com (David Svoboda) writes:
-
- > 9. Find a "cruise speed" and a "thermal speed" for your particular airplane, and
- > memorize the elevator trim positions for these. Cruise speed is usually your
- > best glide ratio; that is, it's when you cover the most ground horizontally, for
- > the amount of altitude you are losing. This is typically pretty fast. Thermal
- > speed is your minimum sink rate, usually just a bit faster than stall.
-
- A guy at our club once told me a good tip for setting up a thermal soarer - once
- you've found the cruise position, set up the elevator linkage so that full-down trim
- gives you cruise. It makes it much easier to fly consistently when set like this. For
- thermalling you pull as much up-trim as required for the conditions.
-
- > 15. If you get the thermal flight of your life, pay attention to how much time you
- > have on your receiver batteries. (Ask me how I know this one. :-( )
-
- This is very important for electric gliders that use Rx battery eliminators. Although I
- use a separate Rx battery pack, I still have to watch this - if the Rx pack gets too flat
- the servos still operate fine, but the relay in the electronic on-off switch I use
- won't trip. This happened to me a few weeks ago when setting up a new radio installation
- (on the ground as I knew the batteries weren't charged), resulting in a burned out
- soft-start MOSFET and lots of smoke! Luckily I was able to repair it myself (and hence
- save about $100 (NZ)), however if this happened in the air the model could well catch
- fire - talk about crashing and burning! :-)
-
- Chris Kaiser
-
- Postgrad, Elec. Eng. Dept.
- University of Canterbury
- Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND
-
-
-