xtratorque

I am going to be putting a Herr Cessna 180 together pretty soon and I'm going to be flying it in a pretty windy area and I was wondering if there are any modifications I can add to the plane to make it handle better. I was wondering if adding weight to the plane might help it get down faster but I want it to take off pretty quickly also. I'm slightly overpowering the plane by putting a Norvel .074 instead of an .061 in the plane. If anyone could help me out I would appreciate it a lot.

Mavericman

Exactly, add weight and bigger motor. dont have super tiny servos get the bigget ones and save on your wallet

BMatthews

I'm going to take the other side of the coin here and suggest that heavy models have NO redeaming charactaristics other than seeming to fly more smoothly in TURBULENT wind. Note the caps please. Yes a little more weight helps with rough bumpy air but for all the rest the extra weight puts more strain on your flying.

Heavy models stall easier. This makes for more work to maintain speed in tough situations where it's hard to judge the speed like in the wind. Heavy models don't respond as quickly so when you turn away from the nose into the wind direction they then to drop at first to regain flying speed under the new conditions. They also tend to have their wings tip up on the windward side more since they can't be pushed sideways as easily so they don't accelerate up to the wind speed as fast. Since they don't accelerate as fast they also tend to fall out of the sky as they come into a landing and drop through the wind shear gradient in that first couple of feet above the ground unless extra care is taken.

I found with 3 or 4 lightweight models that the secret to flying in the wind is good, reliable power, a rearward but tolerable balance location (no speed induced zooms) and a firm thumb on the controls to insist the model do what YOU want rather than what the wind tries. The balance point is probably the real key with the firm thumb coming in a close second. Surprisingly the airfoil doens't seem to matter. I know all about the stories around the flat bottom ones not having any penetration but as long as the model isn't super draggy (like the terrible airfoil on the old CG trainers) then it's more about controlling the ballooning tendencies than the type of airfoil. And the ballooning can be controlled by balancing to the rear of the acceptable range.

Something that sailplance fliers have known for years BTW. And then when you DO get a calm day you'll be that much more ready to take advantage of it.

Sorry if I stepped on your toes MM.

Msaint

My Feedback: (5)

Flying in wind is all about skill on the sticks and knowing what the aircraft is going to do in a given wind condition. I fly slope from time to time and lighter planes do perform better. Ballast is only added to non powered planes to give them forward penetration while thermalling in breezy conditions. Those sailplanes will generally have a very large wingspan and very very low wing loading much lower than you could have no matter how light you build your Herr Cesna. They have no power to do it so they have to add ballast. I have never added ballast to any of my slope planes. Planes built for slope generally will be designed with a higher wing loading than thermal ships. So basically its all about the wing loading. I also found that flying slope made me less afraid to fly power planes in a stiff gusty wind. Although wind does tend to raise the pucker factor

fastlash

My Feedback: (7)

I have flown many a 1/2a plane in winds that even the guys with sixty size planes wouldn,t touch, some where boat anchors others were lite, It all came down to the same thing, and that's skill to read the situation ( wind ) and throttle management, if equipped.

Mavericman

If you guys have read my last post on flying the mavericman special I just went out yesterday and flew in wind with wildfred's ferroplane, with micro servos, an a small batt pack and a widow 049. my first "in wind'' flight, and it was scary! my plane was all over the place, like a fart in the wind, but i handled it, i could have used a little more weight. i got scared and prayed and prayed for the motor to cut, then finally it did and i glided it in.

It was a hard day to fly, but i pulled it off, and landed it, i guess i can only gain skill. I wouldnt add any weight now after hearind bmathews talk.

Msaint

My Feedback: (5)

A few tips for flying in the wind. Use the wind to your advantage. Keep in mind upwind will be slow and the transition from upwind to downwind during a turn will be abrupt. Keep air speed it is your friend. Downwind the plane will lose lift until it gains enough airspeed for the wing to create lift. If your plane has a max forward speed of 15 mph in no wind it will not fly forward in a 20 mph wind, it will be a bear to fly . Until you feel skilled enough keep it at home I had an electric Soarstar which I would routinely fly at the field in 15-20 mph winds when everyone else was afraid to fly. It was a blast to fly. Use the wind to your advantage. If possible find your local slope fliers build something for the slope. It will improve your power flying dramatically. My slope flying skills have allot to be desired heh but it has helped me tremendously flying power.

Japanman

I`ll second that.
Zooming on the slope with a home made styro slopey really brought me along too.
I know this probably goes without saying, but the first thing, and most important thing for control on a windy day is aerolons!

small planes can get tipped around really quickly, and with aerolons you can snap it back, where as rudder control will not help much.

This is a very basic point, i know, but important for those who might be considering control surfaces.

J.M

BMatthews

Just to add an example to my other post.....

A lot of years ago I built two 1/2A Hornets from RCM plans. This was a 36 inch span x 6 inch chord pylon racer. It had no dihedral at all, a thin but flat bottomed airfoil, aileron and elevator and weighed 16 oz. Not as nice as Matchlessareo's Caliente but along the same lines. Once trimmed close to neutral pitching trim it was a joy to fly in any conditions.

I must admit that a rudder-elevator model with the needed dihedral will be a handful in wind. But I'm not sure adding weight will make it any better.

mtthomps

My Feedback: (2)

The airplane does NOT "lose lift in downwind until the airspeed builds up...". The plane behaves NO DIFFERENTLY in upwind or downwind. It does not even know about the wind. The only reason it looks different is that YOU are in motion relative to the wind, as far as the plane is concerned. The only real effect that wind sould have on your flying ability is TURBULENCE. Wind over uneven ground/tree/bushes will create eddies in the air that can cause unpredictable attitude changes.

soarrich

My Feedback: (98)

That's correct. Picture the plane as a boat drifting down a river 10 mph, the boat doesn't "know "it's moving, neither does the plane.

BMatthews

Actually there IS something at work here.

To help illustrate it consider a glider that flies at 10 mph. If you test glide it into a 10 mph wind you just need to let it go and it will descend vertically to the ground at it's trim speed. (for the moment lets forget about wind shear). Now turn around and test glide it downwind. For that you need to toss it at 20 mph for it to have the same glide to the ground.... and obviously it isn't going to land at your feet... Look at how much kenetic energy you had to add to the model for it to achieve level gliding flight for both examples.

Now put this up into the model flying in our river of air. Sure enough once it's flying in a stable glide directly into the wind direction it sees 10 mph of "wind" over the wing just like our "river of air" theory would expect. But there's a transition time when turning from dead into the wind to dead downwind as it is required to accelerate to the new ground speed to match the same airspeed for the new direction. The same kinetic energy that we gave it for our downwind toss has to come from somewhere and that either comes from the engine or from a loss of altitude that is converted to speed as in my sailplanes. The effect is somewhat damped by the fact that our models often take a few seconds to turn around which spreads out this acceleration for the duration of the turn. If the model was flying at the lower edge of the speed range the controls may become mushy and the model appear to sag as it goes through the second half of the turn where the effect is greatest.

The "river of air" principle is only valid for aircraft, or boats, moving in a steady direction in steady winds or currents.

For that matter if you drop a heavy log or something into a flowing river it won't instantly travel with the water. For a few moments, depending on the laws of force, mass and acceleration, the water will flow around the log as it accelerates in the flow direction.

Sailplane fliers probably notice this more than power folks.

mtthomps

My Feedback: (2)

None of what you just said is true. This is basic Physics 101. It's called a moving frame of reference. There is NO extra kinetic energy needed for the model to turn in ANY direction in a steady wind to maintain the same airspeed other than that needed to maintain lift during the turn. This is true at 0 MPH, or at 300MPH. When I turn my aircraft downwind, I am not "dropping it" into the airstream. If I had an airspeed indicator in the plane that indicated 30MPH airspeed, and made a shallow banked turn across and then downwind, the airspeed indicator would read 30MPH the WHOLE TIME. If I went in cirles in the sky at 30MPH airspeed, the airspeed indicator would read 30MPH and the plane would fly absolutely level the WHOLE TIME. If I was in the aircraft, and could not see the ground, I would not be able to tell the difference. That's because there IS no difference. This would be true even if the winds were doing 1000MPH. The problem is that the wind field is a MOVING FRAME OF REFRENCE with respect to the pilot on the ground. Some pilots percieve a turn downwind as an airspeed pickup, and will apply more elevator to compensate. This can stall the aircraft inadvertently, even though
the airframe is experiencing the same passage of air as before.

Help me out here guys!

mtthomps

My Feedback: (2)

Think of it this way: Do you experience an "acceleration" when walking east, and you then turn north and then west? Why not? Due to it's rotational velocity, the earth under your feet is moving about 1300 feet per second eastward. That is almost Mach 2! Why are we not even aware of this? This is, afterall, quite a "geographic wind" to us.

Mavericman

your caklling the moderator of this forum wrong??? thats not what you want to do.

if a plane is flying north into the wind with a total thrust of 10mph and the wind is 5mph, then the resultant velocity is 5mph north.
now the plane turns south and going with the wind, with 5mph of wind behind it, the total velcity is 15mph south. therefore the airspeed has increased. and if you dont believe me, you probably need to go back to elementary school

mtthomps

My Feedback: (2)

The airspeed has NOT increased. The GROUNDSPEED has increased. It is still moving 10mph airspeed. I have a background in engineering and physics.

10MPH is not a "thrust", is is an airspeed. You just stated that the model is moving at 10MPH AIRSPEED. What difference does it make , to the airplane, what speed the ground is passing by at?

Mavericman

every object has gravity inertia and with inertia come mass and gravity. The reason we do not "feel" the earth moving is because its mass is so great that it has a pull of 1g. nothing else is big enough to affect our gravitational pull, so we stay on the earth. If the earth had no mass and no atmosphere(this would creat wind resistance)we would feel it and we would all be knocked off of our feet.

Mavericman

now i get it, im sorry you were right

mtthomps

My Feedback: (2)

The reason we do not feel the earth moving is because we are moving along with it. It is the same reason you cannot tell how fast an airliner is traveling, if you can't look out the window. It could be doing 200MPH, or 500MPH, you would know no different. You could also walk from the front of the plane, turn around, and walk to the back of the plane and it would feel no different on the ground, or at 550mph in the air.

If the earth was to suddenly give up its gravity, we would all start very slowly moving at a tangent to the oblate sphere that is the earth. This would be experienced as a slowly rising position above the surface which would accelerate to 1300feet per second in exactly 6 hours. The velocity would change relative to the earth in accordance with the sin() of the angle through which the earth had turned.

Bipe Flyer

If a plane capable flying at 50mph in still air is flying into a 40mph headwind it is flying at 10mph ground speed, but still 50 mph airspeed. If the plane turns and flies downwind it is flying 90mph ground speed, but still 50mph airspeed. It's all about the speed of the plane relative to the air it's flying in regardless of whether or not that air is moving.

That's why dynamic soaring works. If a glider is flying at 50mph airspeed in a 10 mph tailwind and drops out of the moving air into still air what happens? It looks like nothing happened because the plane is still flying 60 mph ground speed, but it's airspeed just increased from 50 to 60mph. Turn the plane around and pull from the still air back up into the wind and the airspeed will increase 10 mph again, but it still looks like it's flying 60mph ground speed. Now turn downwind again staying in the wind. The airspeed remains 70 mph, but the ground speed just increased from 60 to 70mph.

I hope I've described it correctly.

Sounds hard to believe, but check out this clip.
rtsp://195.125.165.240:554/fsg/diver...mic_soaring.rm

Msaint

My Feedback: (5)

Hey they call it dynamic, around here call that playing in the rotor on the slope Slope is an animal all its own. Lotsa fun and if you keep spreading that URL to that video around I'll never get time on my channel at the slope We keep that high speed stuff secret so all the dedicated power guys stay way hehe. They think we all just fly foam things that float around like thermalling sailplanes

With out going into a physics class here.

It takes more power for a plane to move upwind then it does to move down wind at the same relative ground speed. It takes more power for a boat to go upstream then it does for it to go the same speed down stream. You engine will gain rpm on a downwind turn you engine will lose rpm on an upwind turn. Thus I would have to say that your plane does know the difference between up wind and down wind.

You will have a plane want to rise when turning from downwind to upwind and your plane will want to sink when turning from upwind to down wind.

I also take off into the wind and land into the wind.

If the above wasn't true then I wouldn't worry about a wind sock!

Basically We were trying to help out a guy who was having trouble flying in windy conditions. Remember Bumble Bees CAN'T fly.

mtthomps

My Feedback: (2)

None of this quoted here is true. The reason the plane "rises" when turning upwind is that the pilot perceives the groundspeed change, and interprets that as an airspeed change and applies more up elevator. Planes DO NOT SINK when turning downwind without the pilot commanding it to do so. That is why the rpms increase; the pilot has a tendency, mistakenly, to want to dive the plane in order to "speed it up". It is totally unnecessary. And this IS elementary physics. Will someone with an aeronautical engineering background please back me up on this? This has been discussed on another thread to exaustion. This is not even a debatable point. It is proven, factual, ELEMENTARY physics! It's like telling me that "Velocity = Acceleration x Time" is BS! I fly full scale also, and there is NO EFFECT on the control input when turning from upwind to downwind to crosswind or whatever.

Bipe Flyer

mtthomps,

I don't have an aeronautical degree, but I know you are correct.

mtthomps

My Feedback: (2)

I too am trying to help a beginner out. If you think that wind has an effect on the degree of stick travel when making turns, or that you have to apply more power when turning downwind you would be profoundly mistaken, and would thus be conferring the wrong ideas and concepts to a new flyer. When making turns in wind, they require EXACTLY the same control inputs as if it was DEAD calm. If you behave any differently, you will not be in as firm of control of your aircraft. New flyers need to understand this. They also need to understand that there is a profound difference between ground speed and air speed. We take off and land into the wind because it provides us the lowest possible GROUND speed at which to set the aircraft down, thus minimizing the landing rollout, and the takeoff rollout. If, when landing into the wind, the glide slope is not steep enough, the plane will stall on approach. Wind requires a steeper approach in order to maintain the same airspeed.

Msaint

My Feedback: (5)

Yes you are correct. I was wrong after going and reading up on it Your plane is flying in a chunk of air it has no idea wich way the wind is going. Relative to the air itself.
But it does effect ground speed and you are correct about the rise and sink being the pilot due to his perspective from the ground . Even though the airspeed is constant, its ground speed decreases due to the wind.
Ground speed increases downwind and decreases upwind while the airspeed stays the same. On the slope we are generally flying so fast I dont take much notice to any change in groundspeed from upwind to downwind and I myself am guilty at times of controling my power planes relative to ground speed. Generally via thottle changes from upwind to downwind to keep the plane at the same groundspeed.