Jgwright

For those that have not followed the saga in RCJI I have been making a scratch built Horten Ho229 V3 from a set of CNC ribs that Heiner Skroblin kindly let me have. The plane is a large one, 3.35 wingspan and weighs 18.2 Kg dry. It is powered by a pair of MW44 engines. Many out there would think that this would be grossly underpowered. I was a bit worried about it.

Today we went to Raydon to test fly it. As usual my friend Dave Wilde was on the sticks. The weather was perfect with a 9mph wind directly down the grass strip. We tested everything out and made sure the retracts worked perfectly. The variable length nose leg also was performing as it should. We could find no reason to delay and went for a flight.

The takeoff was a surprise as it just lifted off in half the distance we had available and climbed into the blue sky. However as Dave tried a turn into wind on the downwind leg it became apparent this would not be an easy flight. It just did not want to turn at all. After a lot of consultation we decided it would have to be downwind landing as it was not possible to get the plane on the correct approach into wind. The turning problems were probably due to the failure of the nose leg to retract leaving the 6 “ nose wheel and the doors in the airflow. The plane needed very little trim to fly straight and level. Eventually Dave made a curving approach downwind and shut the engines off. He executed a perfect landing, no easy feat and we both heaved a big sigh of relief and stopped shaking. Brilliant flying on his part.

It will be a while till we get enough courage to fly it again! I will have to make absolutely sure the retracts work without fail and we will have a gyro on ailerons.

[link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgWsipzYj3c]Horten Video[/link]

Sorry about the poor quality of the video but we had to interrupt filming several times. I will post some pictures later

John

CJ2006

Congrats John / Dave...look fwd to seeing it at CJ!

Dick

Meesh

My Feedback: (135)

Congratulations John!

I've been following your build progress closely in RCJI. Beautiful work!

Bob

olnico

Well done John ! That was a big technical challenge. Still some work to do to make it fly as you want.
Good luck for the following...

Jgwright

Thanks guys. Still cannot post pictures.

John

siclick33

John, that's quite a project[X(]

I know nothing about flying wings but just wondered if part of the turning problem might be due to adverse yaw?

Jgwright

I think the problem is the U/C doors and the huge nose wheel steering the plane. Heiner told me that he once steered the plane with the nose wheel when it failed to retract. We will make sure the drag rudders are fully active on the next flight to give Dave more control. The main thing though is to make sure the retracts work. It is all so experimental I suppose we should not expect it to be straightforward.

John

hooker53

My Feedback: (106)

John, Dave.
Chalk that up to nothing but a grand success. Anytime one goes up and back down in one pieceSUCCESS. Thanks for sharing and good luck on the tweaking. Please post Vids of the next one!!
Hooker53

Kriptonic69

My Feedback: (1)

Congrats, looked nice in the sky,,,, actual blue sky was seen in that video.... how did that happen in the north atlantic?

Gene

Stig Andersen

Hey John.

Congratulations on a job well done. Looked very nice in the air.

Jgwright

Here are some of the pictures taken before the flight, you can see the terrified look on the pilots face!

ThomasP

John,

Congratulations, a big technical challenge that, Flying wing, Twin engines, prototype, it goes on.

However keep up the good work, and keep us posted.

Regards,

Alistair.

Gerald Rutten

Nice work!!!

Rgds,
Gerald

thunderceptor

Congrats!
I'm glad to see there are still some daring modelers out there!

There's no such big satisfaction as flying a scratch-built plane and land it without a scratch!

frema

Beautifull job John Beautiful , two 44 engines with kerostart. wow.

I hope you have pictures and video soon.

Regards,

Martin.

GrayUK

Well done guys.

Nice job.

If you need a pilot sometime....you know where i am

Paul

Skymac

My Feedback: (8)

John,

I have a fellow friend who is currently putting one of these projects him self of the building board and I thought it was interesting to see you thread pop up. Can you give any advice, does or donts that might be help full. He is currently drawing it up right now in cad I believe trying to figure out what size to make it, etc.

Jgwright

Justin

I made the plane because I was impressed with the original design and stupidly thought because it was just a wing that it would be quick and simple to make! I was very fortunate to have the help of a group of people in Germany who did the calculations to achieve the correct bell shaped lift distribution. I was told that a slavish copy of the original would struggle to fly. Since then Gary Hethcoat has made his twin EDF version which has also flown well. I would make sure you have a set of Arthur Bentley's superb scale drawings and start from there. You will need to have a 7 degree angle of attack on takeoff and 0-1 degree on landing so you need a nose leg that can be shortened before landing. If you dont have one it will bounce along on the nose wheel destroying the retract and leg. The plane has very little drag and needs only modest power to fly. I would not put more powerful engines in the 1:5 scale that I built, the 2 MW44 's are quite enough. The C of G is critical and has only a narrow range. Mine needed 1.3 Kg of nose weight so do not forget to allow for a reasonable amount. My wingspan is 3.35m, and if I had larger engines like P60's it may have been difficult to keep the weight under the Uk 20 Kg limit.

John

myork

My Feedback: (3)

Very Nice John! I was at the guys house last night that Justin is talking about and his is going to be twin EDF powered and I think it's 58in. I'll make sure he see's this.

dw_crash

My Feedback: (6)

John,

My hats off to you!!!!! You did an awesome job. Fantastic airplane. A true masterpiece.

In these days of ARFs, It is awesome to truly see a craftsman at work.

Best Regards,
Dave Kachorowski

Tempest-RCU

My Feedback: (98)

Congratulations John! You should be very proud

Matt: Have your friend take a look at Gary Hethcoat's design on www.wingsontheweb.com I am in the process of finishing one up now. There are quite a few videos of Gary's design on YouTube.

Thanks!

Paul

rhallgarth

I have followed the construction in the magazine and it just hit me. The Ho229 is a flying wing. Amazing

Jgwright

Thanks guys, yes it is amazing that there was a flying wing (no vertical surface) with 2 turbo jets flying 64 years ago with no computer, just good aerodynamics. I have found the source of the problem on our first flight so hopefully it will be easier on the second one.

John

SpiderJets

Very sexy plane in the air, congratulations !

Jgwright

Jason Fletcher kindly took some video of the Horten during the second flight. This time it was near perfect with the wheels retracting and the turns right and left as they should be. It was also nice and stable. The wretched retract lost air during the flight and would not come down so it sandpapered the underside on the runway before flipping over and wrecking the canopy. Never mind it is all repairable and will have some battle scars that will add to the realism!

[link]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBAajwZjuAk[/link]