I have been messing around with variable lift ideas with styrofoam planes for some time. The idea came after seeing Scaled Composites successful flight of spaceship one. Basically Ive managed to come up with a semi-stable geometry for fixed wing craft. But I need ideas on how this might work better. So after my styrofoam model was built and I had problems using one of those toy air motors to make it run, I went out and bought a Firebird Scout by HobbyZone and subsequently crashed it, as it cannot fly at the altitude which I live. SO what I have now is a hybrid styrofoam testbed scout thingy. Theres a picture attached.
What it is is a primary wing, with winglets so that it doesnt slip because that would be a primary concern when trying to force air over a secondary high wing. There are vanes between the wings which can direct a prescribed amount of airflow over the secondary wing to increase the air's velocity. Out front what you see there are canards, but theyre fixed. Theyre there to give the wings a critical point to stabilize the variable geometry portion of the wing. The firebird scout uses flapereleverons or something to control at least the roll and yaw, while the velocity of the craft controls the lift. not a bad idea, a computer might be able to turn these control surfaces into elevators also to control pitch but thats tangential in a fly-by-wire sort of way. This is ideal however because it controls the slip of the aircraft. while still providing some vertical stabilization.

So I'd like to see this idea used. The reason I built it was not so that I could prove the increased lift of the geometry, I cant really do that unless I throw it off of mount evans at 14,700' due to the increased drag caused by the vanes, but not at extreme altitudes. The problem here is the compressability of the air over the primary wing surface when the vanes are almost closed the airplane could become unstable when going from this configuration to the high-drag-high-lift configuration with the vanes fully closed. any ideas?

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--Steven Hixson

dude, i live at 7 k feet up and my scout works fine. i had the problem of it nosediving at first and i logged on to rc universe to see what people say. the black rod going from the fuselage back to the tail V is really flimsy and will pop out on basically every crash. the solution is to put pressure on the rod (called the tail boom) underneath the propeller. lots of pressure, until you hear it pop ack into place. it sounds like you just broke the thing in half, but itll fly. another fyi: up in high elevations (5 k feet+) its smart to buy a larger prop. get one for the Firebird II and shove it on there. youll get better wind catch. im positive itll fly just fine with these two minor adjustments.

PB2

p.s. that pic is insane. the added weight is way too much for the little scout prop. id give $10 to see a tape of it all flying. take it off and pop the boom back.