ORIGINAL: gaRCfield
I'm gonna say it:
BALLAST!!!
Possibly the only benefit of a heavier airplane. Maybe there are better methods, but this is the most basic law of physics: F=ma
I am sure there will be answers about wing incidence, dihedral and anhedral, etc. But my personal experience is flying my airplane with 5000mah packs and 4000mah packs. It feels much lighter and more graceful on the smaller packs, but gets banged around a bunch in the wind. If I use the 5000mah packs I hardly notice it.
Hi Joe,
You are correct to put this in this discussion. Have no fear of making this point as this is very appropriate to this topic.
I was going to do so in another recent thread relating to 'weight' and possible competitive advantage.
You should elaborate some more to help with understanding the relevance.
I will add some ;
This should be considered first ; P=mv. ( P being momentum)
A lot of us increase velocity (v) in wind - actually we are increasing momentum.
Your suggestion of adding weight (should this be at the wing tips ?? ) does the same thing.
Doing both will max,, the effect. Because one is multiplied by the other the increase in P is significant if either, and much more if both, are increased.
Getting to your F=ma ; Mass (m) here is dependant on or a consequence of m in P=mv.
Keeping this in lay-man's terms you are really talking about 'inertia' ; ' the measure of a body's resistance to changes in velocity or state of motion '.
However there are also aero solutions and if we were to take inspiration from the real gurus of aero , the F1 guys like Adrian Newey, we might really find a solution set that works well.
We don't really experiment all that much with this stuff and we should.
There is likely to be a 'magic' combination of physical (shape, volume and mass) and aero (devices, up-grades, band aids etc - be they fences ,sfg's, tiplets, winglets, turbulators etc) yet to be discovered.
Interesting topic well worth pursuing.
Brian