ORIGINAL: FHHuber
ORIGINAL: SALMONBUG
if somebody can give me a method to quantify the effect of winglets on a RC aircraft, I am ready to buy.
I don't talk here about an effect on stability or flight behaviours, but the effect on drag and airplane consumption.
I thruly believe that it's so small that it can't be mesure on a rc bird fit with our conventional equipement
Easy... make removeable wingtips of various shapes. (I played with this....)
mix and match wingtips.
Example: (Sig Kobra)
Standard design wingtip on one side (as shown in the plans for the kit), and the carved one shown early in this discussion. (In my test... the modified tip added 1/4 inch to the span. I didn't make a spacer plate for the other sde to compensate)
The model would drop the wing with the standard tip first every stall. I couldn't force it to drop the other wing first.
Level cruise speed flight required significant rudder toward the modified tip (indicating less drag on that side) I also had to have a bit of aileron trim to compensate for a roll toward the standard tip... (indicating increased lift from the modifed tip.) How much of the rudder was needed due to th aleron being down (adverse yaw) and how much was due to just the wingtip's effect on the tip vortice? Hard to say.
******
Most people are afraid to try asymetric setups... but after you've lost 1/3 of a wing in a mid-air flying RC Combat... If you don't panic you realize the things can be controlled when one wing is defferent from the other.
as I mentioned you have significant changes in airplane behaviours, but can you prove your total drag decreased?
by the way I also somethime play with wingtips