Willdo

quote ORIGINAL: BMatthews
What's the big deal? I've hear that on the F14,F16 and F15's that more than 1/2 the lift comes from the fuselage and inter engine areas of the strakes and bodies as opposed to the actual wing panels.

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Not a big deal my friend, just a simple enquiry to find out from someone who might know how it actually flies, and I got one answer which I will be happy with ( unless someone comes up with a better one).

Slightly different situation to that of an F16 etc travelling at the speeds that they do, - what's the betting against it out manoeuvering an F16 at 3 or 4 mph!

Whereabouts in BC is Burnaby ? - one of my sons spent most of last year in BC (Fernie and Vancouver Island), - got down to about -40 there, not great flying weather!

Willdo

Dick,
BTW, I did like the attachment - I'm not sure of it's significance in this thread, but I guess it could apply to the odd individual I have come across in other threads!

perttime

It seems to have a good amount of wing area, however unconventionally shaped. If it is not all that heavy and has some power, there is no reason why it would not fly.
...
I recall a site for full-size home-built aircraft (Rans?) mentioning that whatever all the engineers say, the primary thing that makes an aircraft fly is money
...

rmh

my Fantom- built in 1980- was a attempt at making a .049 powered racer - It weighed 12 ounces all up and had two servos mixed to elevons. 200sq inches. not a good racer --
stability was really pretty good and at speed would do a half as sed roll at full elevon deflection
the airfoil - just a high point for structural.
now (ta da) I am going to stick a small electric motor and some lipos in it and try it again - I can beat original weight and power as airframe total was 8 ounces with the original TEE DEE /batts n servos/rx .

mesae

It's a "stand way off and squint" scale Phantom!

rmh

it is an exact scale !
At least,compared to the "scale" aerobatic crap sold for big gassers -YAKS especially
anyway - I wanted to see if no dihedral and simple tip plates would work -instead of using ailerons. it does -but low speed performance gets pretty dismal

mesae

I'm with you on those Yaks and such. All those swiss cheese laser cut plywood slab sided clones get a little monotonous. Still, they fly well. I miss building in earnest but with three kids and my full-scale flying pastime in addition to my real job, I get precious little time for it.

scratchonly

Aerodynamic experts have determined that a bumble bee cannot fly.

Tall Paul

Name them.

KC36330

had nothing to do with aerodynamics, it was based on the fact that they have to little a wing area for their weight/mass.

kc

Willdo

This machine cost ZILCH (except the cost of an old secondhand motor and an old RC) the rest was from scrap. and it FLIES! - of course it's only a lowly model, but the same principle applies to models, - ARF's etc. as opposed to designing and building your own exciting machines!

The guy who made the above statement probably sat in his office, threw money at projects and let the engineers do all the hard work and worrying, and if it was successful he took all the glory - cos he was the leader of the team and he paid the money!

Villa

Hi Willdo
At least yours looks like an airplane, so it may fly. I designed and built the attached Flying Lawn Mower. Most people want to know how it can fly. I had a ball designing, testing, and modifying it. It now flys very well. It uses a 46 size engine and weighs about 7 pounds.

BMatthews

Burnaby is a separate city but it's connected with Vancouver right down in the south western corner of the province. I've been through Fernie a couple of times on motorcycle trips. It's a quaint but very quiet place and gets the odd sprinkle of snow even in the summer thanks to being so high up and close to the Rocky Mountains. Usually it's hot as hades in the summer's there but now and then the Rockies funnel a current of very cold northern air down and then it's like winter in august.

BMatthews

Does it do a decent job of cutting and mulching while you're taxiing around?

Willdo

D'ya reckon if it had a blade it could hover too?


BM,
We stayed in Vancouver with my wife's relatives we loved it with those huge mountains in the background! - we found the people very friendly as well!

perttime

... you take it too seriously ...
Whatever model we manage to get in the air costs something, you did not get the old parts and scraps for free.
With full scale the cost is on a different scale too. I took that statement as a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the realities that a full-size builder/buyer is facing. And it was probably in a section that dealt with financing options.

Willdo

PERTTIME
I don't think you realise just how frugal this guy is ( not me by the way, - he's a guy I used to work with), - he got EVERYTHING virtually free, - believe me, the rubbish skip, or "dumpster" as the Americans call it, never really got full when he was around! - never wastes anything!

As for me being serious! you must be joking! - I can be serious when necessary of course, but I'm "tounge in cheek" most of the time, - that's me!

However in this case I'm being a little serious, - something I've figured out over the many years on this earth is that every joke is inspired by a serious thought.
As an engineer who has done the hard graft ( not in aircraft though) I've seen this sort of thing happen!

nexstar22

actually with planes such as f-16's, there lift is created by the wings, untill the angle of attack becomes so great that the lift is no longer generated by the air moving over the wings, but is actually created by the thrust of the engine alone...as for most rc planes the power to weight ratio is so great that the lift generated by the wings is really only needed for straight and level flight. thats why we can acheive crazy manuvers that cant be done in a real plane.

mesae

So are you saying that if the wings broke off an F-16 during a tight turn, or they broke off a 40% Edge during a harrier or a wall, nothing would happen? It would just keep flying at high alpha until the pilot tried to level it out, then it would fall from the sky?


Remember, even a stalled wing produces some lift.

Bax

My Feedback: (11)

I did read of an incident where an F-15 2-seater had a collision and lost a significant amount of one wing panel. The airplane was controllable enough to be able to safely land. Wonder if that was an "urban legend" type of story, though.

mesae

I heard or read something similar while I was in the USAF.

NRistow

Well, there is a picture, been going around for years along with the story.

[link=http://www.uss-bennington.org/phz-nowing-f15.html]one wing f15[/link]

KC36330

an F-16 generates considerable lift from the fuselage wing blending allot like the LEX on the F-18s.

kc

Shoe

The way to achieve minimum induced drag (even for a modern fighter) is to have an elliptical lift distribution. A well-designed fuselage will "carry through" the wing lift with little or no dip in the lift distribution. This means that the most efficient fuselage will actually generate more lift per unit span than the wing.

That said, most fuselages would generate very little lift in the absence of the wing. Consider that wingtips themselves rarely generate much lift, but without the wingtips, the lift generated by the rest of the wing would be significantly less.

In the case of the F-15 with the missing wing, the lift on the "missing" side was generated mostly by the stabilator. If you were to try to create lift with the fuselage, you would load up the remaining wing an cause the aircraft to roll (unless you could completely "null out" the wing lift with aileron). If you estimate maximum lift coefficient of the F-15 stabilator and combine it with the area, you can determine the minimum landing speed for a given gross weight. For the case in question, this estimate comes out pretty close to the reported landing speed.

I don't think I would want to land on the boat minus a wing.

nexstar22

I guess what I ment to say was that when an f-16 climbs completely vertical, the plane is now being supported by the thrust of the engine and no longer the lift created by the wings.