Paulus

Here's a link to quite some pics of a speed event that was held in Germany. Highest speed recorded was about 230 MPH. Very iinteresting designs!
Pics start halfway through the page and following pages.

[link]http://www.rc-network.de/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=8&t=000206&p=6[/link]

Paul

der_steuermann

My Feedback: (2)

Hi folks,

this SPEED-CUP was the very first one since almost 15 years here in Germany. The German Speed-Cup contests have been unique worldwide so far and have a long history back into the sixties. Maybe there will be something comparable in the US next year?

We had great weather conditions and a good time in Achmer near Osnabrueck. Speed measurements have been taken both by Doppler-Effect and by radar gun providing almost identical results - the largest difference was only 5 kph but mostly within one or two kph.

It is planned to make a 2-years event from now in Achmer, maybe in a 1-year-rotation with another club located in southern Germany...

proptop

My Feedback: (8)

Daymn! There's your "extreme speed prop planes"! I remember reading about Maynard Hill having a back and forth "battle" with some Russian guys back in the early '70's using planes similar in layout. Remind me of big versions of controlline speed planes.
Hmm, some of these pictures get the ole wheels a turnin'

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

Thanks for sharing those pictures, those are very impressive planes![X(] Unlike other forms of competition, it's pretty hard to dispute who is the fastest, and even if you aren't the top dog, it still looks like a lot of fun to try! I'm going to try to build one for a K&B 6.5 PYLON engine.

der_steuermann

My Feedback: (2)

Tom, that's very true. The F2A Speed C/L freaks are the real speed kings. Their speeds are enormous considering the drag produced by the control line itself forming about 80% of the entire drag. Compared to them we R/C guys have a much easier job...

Bob.R

My Feedback: (2)

der steuermann - did you participate? If so, which plane is yours? Very cool stuff!

der_steuermann

My Feedback: (2)

Hi bobber,

originally I intended to compete with my V-MAX speed plane pictured below. But since this is the first speed meeting after a long time I decided to grab my video cam to make a nice film As a participating pilot you definitely have not the time and patience to carry out either accurately...

vulpina

Wow this plane looks impressive , what engine are you using in there ?

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

Hi DER STEUERMANN! I always enjoy pictures of your speed plane! It looks like the design has been taken to the point where your work is finished. If not finished yet, very difficult to improve on. The V tail looks like more work to setup with accurate angles and concealed linkages, is it worth the effort? Of course it looks very cool and that alone is worth the effort[8D], but is it noticeably faster than a similar plane with a conventional tail? I am still just drawing pencil lines on butcher paper so the more information I can get before I start butchering balsa wood, the better! Right now I am looking at a 48" span, 380 sq" area and 36" long fuselage for a K&B .40 RIRE.

der_steuermann

My Feedback: (2)

Here's a small vid of the winner's flight:

top speed 230 mph, model Dago Red with modified MB .40 engine

http://www.hohenlohe-webundvideo.de/speed.wmv

right mouse button + safe link target as...

der_steuermann

My Feedback: (2)

Currently it is a converted 3.5 cc car engine which has been highly modified.

der_steuermann

My Feedback: (2)

No, it isn't. Both designs perform similar for pure speed.

For a 6.5 cc speed project I'd suggest a wing span and a fuse length of both 43". The wing area should be about 26 dm². Good luck with your design!

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

Thanks for the recommendations, DER STEUERMANN. I'll get my eraser out, so much to do, I might have to hire someone to do the erasing for me! Of course I'll have to find bigger butcher paper if I'm going to lengthen the fuselage! I'm a little bit confused with your 26dm squared dimension though, that sounds like 78 sq" for a wing area, and I'm sorry but I'm not "man" enough to try that! I hope to make it weigh 3.5 lbs or so RTF, so hopefully I'm a good judge of where strength is not needed. I will pretend that I am building a .15 powered plane, that will help to keep the heavy ideas from entering my head.

Rudeboy

A decimeter (dm) is one tenth of a meter... 26 square dm is 0.26 square meter... or 403,008 square inches... does that sound more appealing...?

Good stuff Steuermann! What did you do to the car engine for it to be "highly modified"?

I liked the subtitle of the vid: Männer und Motoren... Men and engines, lol, that just about sums it up.
I myself tend to be very intrigued by pieces of machinery that create a lot of noise, smoke, flames, heat and wind (not necessarily all together and in that order).
Tried my turbine engine for the first time yesterday: talk about an ear to ear grin...!

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

OK , I got straightened out, 43 " span, roughly 300 sq" area, average chord of 7 ". Sounds fast!

HighPlains

My Feedback: (1)

All the extreme speed wantabe's should note that all the German speed machines are basic double taper wings. None of them have swept back wings or deltas planforms, because they don't work if you want to go fast with a model airplane with limited engine power.

Maynard Hill's design in '66 or so was the Tortoise. It was a shoulder wing design that would have been right at home with the German designs. His world record speed back then was around 140 mph. That was with a Supertigre .60 engine without tuned pipe and an early "Analog Proportional" radio (no servo torque, poor centering, large and heavy). An updated Tortoise with modern equipment would be very fast.

Image, nearly 40 years ago!

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

As one of the wantobees, I have one question, what's your claim to fame?

Vmax

Hi folks,
one thing I figured is that it almost doesn´t matter wich design the plane has as long as it is made for speed.
A swept wing is something for subsonic speed optical reasons or CG reasons. A delta is good for a wide speed range but needs a lot of power.
More important is the engine. Very high rpm are needed and prop with high pitch. I had same plane like the white futaba plane from Hans-Joachim Müller and Peter Schmald (the red one with the OPS engine). In the pictures you see one of my selfmade carbon props. 8" diameter and 11.5" pitch. This is one of the most important parts on a speed plane. You can buy a good engine. You can buy a fuselage as seen. But good props are really hard to get. They are the gear between engine and air. A lot of power to waste here. It doesn´t matter if high or low wing. High wings are easy to launch. These planes have one thing in common. The fuselage is just a little larger then the engine. Look at F5D pylon races. The planes look different. But speed with the same engines are the same(during the straight parts of the flight). T-tails; normal tails. They work as long there are small and thin. Look at the design of F5D planes. Many things are identical. No swept wing; high aspect ratio. Long fuselages( The longer the better. Gives more stability). And important for speed planes in my opinion is a symmetrical airfoil. No moment changes during flight. Airfoils like NACA 0008 and NACA 0006 are uesd. Rolf Pietchmann usese a NACA66a006 on plane that looks like a bee. And last but not least a smooth style of flying is necessary. No hard turns. Needs to much speed.

Niels

der_steuermann

My Feedback: (2)

Yes, I second Niels proposal for a good CF prop. It is the 'icing on the cake' and can put your speed plane to really impressive speeds. But it needs some patience and the trial error method to find the best prop for your plane/engine/pipe combo. Already two weeks ago it has been explained that there's no alternative but a well designed carbon fiber CF prop for 'extreme speed'.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_22...tm.htm#2220279

Here's another post from about five months ago that has been discussed wildly. It focuses on improvements for speed plane designs. The basic question of a RCU member was:

Few variations of planes?
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_18...tm.htm#1815237

Those speed planes competing last weekend in Achmer are in fact very simple constructions. Just take your desired rear exhaust engine with mounted non-muffled tuned pipe and place it onto a large sheet of paper (side view). Then simply copy the contours the engine/pipe unit. The widest part of the fuse is the engine itself. With respect to the ratios of wing root to wing tip, wing area, ratio of wing area to elevator area etc. just take a picture of a F5D plane (as Niels already mentioned there are lots of similarities) or simply copy the layout of one of the speed planes pictured in the www.rc-network.de – forum . With respect to the mentioned NACA airfoils you cannot go wrong here – so don’t use a F3D pylon airfoil being designed for little speed loss during the pylon turn-overs.

Let's see which new designs will be born during the winter season - it should be fun to hopefully see a speed contest in the US sometimes in future. In Achmer no speed classes were established – just SPEED regardless of engine capacity. Enthusiastic speed freaks like combatpigg maybe will push the envelope here...

der_steuermann

My Feedback: (2)

Hi Rude,

although the modern car engines already feature most of the goodies called “Turbo” there’s still room for improvement. That inludes: Improved intake timings and liner timings, modified connecting rod and piston, adjustment of the compression ratio, crankcase volume optimization, crankshaft flow improvement, custom venturi carb & cylinder head & and integral spinner.

HighPlains

My Feedback: (1)

I have spent a lot of time with 170+ mph model airplanes in Pylon racing.

My claim to fame?

Well I started the "high aspect ratio" wings in Pylon back in 1987 on a Formula One.
This lowers the induced drag in the turns, so you come out of turns with more airspeed.

I introduced the concept of the "expanding width" of a quickie fuselage to prevent flow seperation at the wing/fuselage junction. This acts like a wing fillet (which are not allowed by the rules). It adds 5+ mph to a quickie.

Swept wings start to work when you go much faster than any model airplane is going. Tail less designs (deltas) don't have the best airfoils for low drag.

Aerodynamics is a art with many artists. Amazing discoveries are still being made.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

I can't take the pressure here, a rookie speed freak should be given at least a couple of years' worth of mentoring before there is any "envelope" talk. We must first learn to walk before we can run! There seems to be a pretty wide gap between C/L speed design and RC speed. The C/L speed planes are barely capable of flight at anything below a very fast take off speed. RC planes are expected to perform better at much slower take off and landing speeds. I think if there is going to be any major break throughs with RC speed design, it will be with down sizing of the wing area, and learning how to cope with planes that are harder to handle. BTW HIGHPLAINS, I've got 1/2A planes that do 170+, no big deal there.

jessiej

Back around 1960 I built a CL Proto Speed job that looked like a scale model of some of those in that great series of pictures. Of course if directly scaled up the fuse would be too wide as it was already the width of the engine

jess

bob27s

My Feedback: (19)

Looks like a conventional F3D plane and engine won.

Looks like few of these have landing gear. Id imagine they may be a handful to hand launch. Any idea if they use a catapult or other launch device...or if its just the ole heave-ho !

I may just have to go to Germany for this one next year

Bob

bob27s

My Feedback: (19)

der_ster____________

do you have a copy of the rules for that speed event ??

Bob