RCU Forums - View Single Post - help pse: need advice on Rigging angle for an undercambered airfoil
Old 03-03-2011 | 11:40 AM
  #3  
BMatthews's Avatar
BMatthews
 
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 12,432
Likes: 0
Received 28 Likes on 24 Posts
From: Chilliwack, BC, CANADA
Default RE: help pse: need advice on Rigging angle for an undercambered airfoil

The actual rigging angle of the wing to tail will not depend so much on the airfoil but on the balance point location. The tail doesn't care if the wing is symetrical or highly cambered. It will only see the longitudinal torque generated by the spacing between the wing's 25% chord location and the actual balance point location. There's are relatively minor roles played by the airfoil's pitching moment and the high center of drag associated with a high mounted wing that has lots of dihedra but those are easily taken into account during the first flight with a few clicks of trim.

So set the tail to have about 1 to 1.5 degrees negative angle with respect to the airfoil's chord line and run the numbers for your design through one of the CG calculators available online. Assuming you want to make this a performance glider like model you'll want to set the stability margin to 5% which is the same as suggested for sporty aerobatic models. If you want to set it higher to around 10% then you'll want to increase that stab to wing angle to -2 degrees. But the closer you get to 0% stability the more efficient a soaring model you'll have.

You can actually squeak it pretty close to 0 too because the high center of drag of a typical cabin style OT model provides a stabilizing force that isn't included in the CG calculations due to their relative simplicity and focus on only direct factors. So 5% stability isn't quite as small an amount as it seems. Countering this is the pitching moment which is trying to make the model pitch down with increases in speed. But on any model with old timer like tail moment lengths and tail sizes this is a relatively minor force. Besides, if you've flown any performance gliders that are well set up using the dive test method you've already flown models with low stability margins. It's not as "dangerous" as it sounds. It just means that the nose up response to a gain in speed or power is slower and takes up more room. But it's still easily able to manage itself in hands off flight.

Due to their unpiloted nature contest free flight models are set up with stability margins that are at zero or just barely over it. And yet they are stable enough in flight to fly by themselves. So don't be afraid to run the SM at 5% and even reduce it during flight testing.

In fact if this sounds like something you'll do I'd suggest a stab to wing angle of only -0.5 to 1 degree so the elevator doesn't end up with permanent down trim. Or if the tail is removable for transport then it can be shimmed at a later date to find tune the angle and remove any elevator offset.