Tuesday, May 09, 2006

They aimed for the sky, and missed

In previous posts (here and here) I mentioned one of the clubs I am in was making an airplane. Well we finished it and it went down to GA to compete. To cut out a whole lot of technical aerospace jargon I will put it simply: the plane won the record for most propellers destroyed and most crashes survived. Basically the servos that powered the controlling surfaces (flaps/ailerons, rudder, and elevators) had about a 1/5 of the power they needed. When the plane got to about 30 mph the pilot attempted to take off, the wind overtook the servos and the plane pitched into the ground. This happened about 15 times, until they cut down the elevator to about a third of its original surface area and got it into the air. However the center of gravity was above the fuselage and the plane started swinging around (very amusing video they have of it). Then it crashed and the rudder section broke off, and the front landing gear bent. It's still fixable, so some friends and me are going to fix I up and make it fly.
Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

OOPS!!!

Houston we have lift off!

Yeah!

See it did actualy fly in the end.

So ended the build a plane odyssey for this years graduating seniors.

2 comments:

  1. I bet those graduating seniors endn up designing the next generation of drones for our military.

    Up, up, up, down, down down, crunch.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If they end up designing a drone, they should call it "7 of 9"

    ReplyDelete