I'm building a purpose-built camera plane (for pro-sumer 5 megapixel digital camera in the nose on a gimbal for tilt / pan / zoom).

I have an 80" cub wing.

What incidence should I set the wing relative to the flight path (if tailplane is at zero degrees)?

I'm guessing, but I was planning on 3 to 5 degrees? Does this seem reasonable?

Thanks!!!

If you set a normal Cub wing with the aft bottom part parallel to the thrust line, you automatically get a couple degrees of positive incidence. You don't need more than that.

Bruce,

It would be interesting to see the sketches of what the airplane was going to look like.

I don't have a sketch, but can describe what I'm doing.

The front of the fuse will be opened for the camera to shoot through. Will look kind of like a fish with it's mouth open. I'll try to remember to post a construction pic once I'm further along.

The nose will have an opening to allow for full-forward shooting, tilting down for vertical and everthing in between. This protects the equipment somewhat from minor mishap, cleans up the airframe a little too.

Fuse length is 60", height 6", width 4". Using an 80" cub wing. Tail dragger setup. A very "Stik" like fuse. The forward 24" of the fuse will contain all the gear, the top of the fuse sectionalized into hatches for easy access.

Power will be electric motor mounted on a pod made of sheet aluminum (AXI 4120-14 motor, JES 70-3P Opto controller, 14 2400S cells). This should provide somewhere between 700 and 900 watts to the prop (14 x 7). This setup easily flies a 10 lb Monocoup (see the Hobby-Lobby website and video at: http://www.hobby-lobby.com/monocoupe.htm)

Also, I need to be able to shut off motor in-air [to minimize vibration] and electric for noise sensitive areas

I chose a tractor setup to run from a pod, to clear the prop from the camera lens. The pod will be an A-frame made of aluminum, attached to the fuse sides just in fron the wing by bolts and wingnuts for easy removal and adjustment of thrust line (If camera equipment changes between flights)

The camera intially will be driven by 3 channels, Tilt, Zoom, Shoot.
Also planning for mode switching between still frame / video.
I already have on-ground video capability using X-10 transmitter from the NTSC output from these cameras. This is how I presently "frame" the shots using PAP & KAP (see the website http://www.bird-shots.com)

The specs for the camera can be found at:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/spec...oly_c5050z.asp

I also have this as camera which which is an alternative:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/spec...tax_optios.asp

I havent purchased a digital video camera yet, but will configure the camera gymbal in the plane for that option too. I do not plan to use downliked video for anything but aiming the flight cameras.

I hope this helps!

Bruce:

I have been designing regular size airplanes for the past 45 years, and big ones for the past 27 years. All of them that perform really good have had the incidence angle set at 1 1/2 to 2 degrees positive, when the stab is at zero. I think this is the right range for you also, with the airfoil that goes on the type of plane you are contemplating. At one time I did a study by changing the incidence angle from zero to about plus five degrees, and the differences were unbelievable. At zero degrees the airplane was hard to keep level - it either wanted to climb or dive - no in between. At angles above two degrees, it didn't fly level in the air - it mushed along if you know what I mean . Of course, this study was done on a flat bottom airfoil. Fully symetrical airfoils can be flown at zero degrees with good results.