LADISLAV
Posts: 107
Joined: 7/19/2004
From: Dundas,
ON, CANADA
Status: offline
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Since Jim Peason, the editor of RCM magazine sent me picture of ARROW with canard surfaces added, I have been following chat line discussing ARROW design. I am always encouraging modelers to modify my designs to suit their desire to make design better looking, flying or just experimenting. I really like some of the changes that were done already to it. Some of suggested changes to the basic design I feel are not necessary. There is this notion that using the lead to balance the model is no-no. First of all, the model should not need any lead. On my model I couldn’t put the receiver battery into the nose, because it would be nose heavy. I had to place battery pack into servo compartment. If you are using hard balsa or heavier engine then you might need some lead in the nose. So what. The ARROW will fly just fine when total weight is up to 7 Lbs.
Some suggest lengthening the nose. That is fine if made 6” longer. Any more and you might run into problem on landing. When raising the nose to slow down, the nose might come up unexpectedly and, stalling the model close to the ground. I experienced that on one of my North Stars where I lengthen the nose by 12”. The model was definitely lighter with no lead, but landings were unpredictable.
The ARROW with curved wing tips and the sub fin looks beautiful. I like the shape of the wingtips, but I can see need for small tip floats under them.
On that model I just questioning need to build the fuselage using truss construction. Cutting out fuselage sides from 1/8” balsa sheet is much faster. I had no problem keeping everything square. The plugged in wings will not make the model much heavier if at all.
The ARROW with canard in front intrigued me to such degree, that I took one of my ARROWS and added canard. The canard had + 2 degrees on it. For test flight, I kept elevons and connected canard’s elevator to flap port in receiver. The model took off beautifully and in the air behaved as original design. During level flight, I play with flap control to see how much pitch control the canard gives me. On this one flight, the canard’s elevator was controlling pitch but it wasn’t as sensitive as with elevons. On following flights I changed controls to have ailerons on the wing and elevator on canard surface. The take off from paved surface was longer. During the flight the model was stable in pitch but YAW stability was effected. I fill that turbulence over the canard was blanking off the vertical fin. I added winglets on wing tips. Did not help.
I did not like landings. I had to come in much faster then with pure delta. If I moved C/G slightly back, the sometime model would pitch up unexpectedly close to the ground.
I know that that there is solution to this problem. I hope someone else will try to solve it. My canard delta is back being pure delta wing ARROW. Good luck.
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All Forums >> RC Airplanes >> Seaplanes >> RE: Northstar follow up : ARROW by Laddie Mikulasko ! 
RE: Northstar follow up : ARROW by Laddie Mikulasko ! - 
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