Frag

I've had this idea because 3D folks are always talking about giant control surfaces and lots of throw. Well, how about some setup that allows the entire wing surface to move independantly of the other wing or together like flaperons or spoilerons? You could have a tube connecting the wings on with some kind af bearing the wings could move around. The servo would have to be very torquey and may need to work through some kind of advantaged levered system due to the great pressures involved in moving the entire wing. I would think the 3D possibilities could be insane to say the least.
What do you think?

acropilot_ty

I had a friend with a little glider that used this setup... "Wingerons" It would roll like crazy, but it was also a tiny little plane so the loads were light. I don't remember the name of the kit, but that might be a good starting point to see how they set up the control linkage and structures.

Ty

Frag

And I thought I was being original[sm=rolleyes.gif]

BMatthews

I think you may be right. But would the pilot be able to keep up with it? A heavy torque 1/4 scale type servo would be a must I would think.

It's not an original idea but it may produce some interesting results. Looking at some of the electric parkflyer models these days you see the ailerons at almost 1/2 the chord. Jumping right into wingerons may be the next step.

I'd keep the model small at first. Perhaps modify a Taco or some other 25 size model.

rmh

This idea ain't new - been done by a number of people .
for park flyers - it should work-
but for larger stuff - the control is just plain ol too tricky.
Geeze - I can tell when my 33% models are off one click of trim and that is a positive - repeatable change
on ailerons which represent ONLY 15% of total wing area
Just as the lil foamies are easy to fly with he CG darn near anywhere --this same light/low speed setup makes it easy to trim and correct.
How about this ---
make a flat , round foamie-with a fin at the rear for some directional conrol
then hook up two mixed servos to simply bend and warp the aft part of the disc .
a one piece airframe -
same kind o setup -
worked for Wilbur and Orville.

Ben Lanterman

I just came back from Joe Nall where a couple of guys were campaigning an airplane the called the Frenzy. It used all flying horizontals and for all practical purposes a vertical. The advantage is that the tail can be moved to a non stalled condition at any airplane angle of attack and give lots of control moments.

With the wing you want it to stall at some flight conditions to enable the maneuvers. Even with stalled wings the big ailerons used on something like the Frenzy (they talk about it in the 3D forum I believe) can still deliver very high roll rates. With full flying wings you would have the wings going from stalled to unstalled with roll control input. It would be interesting but not necessarily controllable as you would wish. Take a high angle of attack roll to the left. The left wing goes LE down, the right wing LE up. You get in initial roll moment to the left. As the right wing goes higher it stalls even more and loses lift. The left wing is at lower angle of attack and has less lift. I am not too sure it is a good condition. Having said that a small foamy would be an interesting experiment.

As Dick mentioned the hinging of a large aileron on the trailing edge is probably going to be less sloppy and certainly lighter due to less structure needed.

I have a Graupner produced glider in the basement that is still in the process of being built after 35 years that uses full flying wings. However the rotation is small and you are simply moving up and down the linear lift curve. The same wing with ailerons would still be moving in the linear lift curve range and would be lighter.

It is an interesting idea but one that basically has more downs than ups for normal airplanes. With the 3D airplanes it might be worth the effort to investigate it just to be sure you arn't missing anything. You have to hinge at a location that will keep down flutter and still have low servo loads.

I have also seed slope soaring gliders that had both differential wing rolling but also wing incidence control. The horizontal tail was fixed with no elevator. Nothing seemed to follow on so I would guess the results were less than great.

beenie

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Wingrons have been tried on at least one other production plane, the Clancy Stagger Bee. It is smaller and kind of a park flyer. I am not sure of the linkage or the pivot, but the flight video looked neat. It would be a little hard to make a slop free precision mechanism on a larger plane. It seems like it is a techneque for smaller planes.

Dancy

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Just a thought but Helicopters have been doing this for a long time! Be sure you know what happens if the center of pressure does not match the center of gravity! Rotor flutter is an ugly thing!

iAlex

There was a sailplane design featured in Model Aviation around the 1990-1991 timeframe that uses this same idea. It had wingerons and then flaps as well. Unfortunatly I don't remember the name or the issue it came out in. I would look it up but unfortunatly that issue is in a box in my parents attic. Maybe someone has access to issues from that time and can come up with more specific information.

Tall Paul

This is the mechanism Charlie Richards supplied with his wingeron/pitcheron kits.
With a single servo it worked as wingerons.. with two, it would pitcherons.
The pitcheron function needed very strong servos to move the wings in pitch.
A standard servo worked OK for the wingeron function, but two of them weren't sufficient for pitcherons on the same plane.