Journal #8690
Posted 8 years ago2016-04-12 15:11:59 UTC
In my last journal I wrote about how for university we're making a model aircraft which has to be capable of carrying a 32oz bottle, and it must also be capable of being disassembled to be carried in another model aircraft.
Today we had the flights, and my team's plane performed fairly well. It had one problem, in that the landing gear wasn't rigid enough and the wheels were too small, so it caught on the ground a lot and flipped over when that happened. We had three flights, but there were also three failed attempts where the plane flipped before it left the ground, and on one of the flights it flipped on landing.
We fixed the problem with some zip ties however and none of the flights after that had any problems.
I'll upload some pics from my phone and write more about it tomorrow, but until then I will leave you with this very important piece of news:
Today we had the flights, and my team's plane performed fairly well. It had one problem, in that the landing gear wasn't rigid enough and the wheels were too small, so it caught on the ground a lot and flipped over when that happened. We had three flights, but there were also three failed attempts where the plane flipped before it left the ground, and on one of the flights it flipped on landing.
We fixed the problem with some zip ties however and none of the flights after that had any problems.
I'll upload some pics from my phone and write more about it tomorrow, but until then I will leave you with this very important piece of news:
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Nice on the 3333 days thingy ^^
I've uploaded an album here: http://imgur.com/a/f0TYp
Our team's plane is the white one.
There were two other teams, the red team and blue team.
Red team's plane performed fairly well. Apparently their wings weren't as rigid as they could have been but they didn't have any hiccups and all of their flights were successful.
Blue team's was interesting. Their first flight attempt (without a payload) ended badly. The plane didn't take off very well, and it lost control and entered a flat spin shortly after taking off, damaging the landing gear and the tailplane when it hit the ground. It had a number of flight attempts, most of which resulted in the plane flipping before takeoff due to the damaged landing gear. They had one successful 'proper' flight (minus payload), which ended with the landing gear being completely bent to the point of uselessness when it landed. It wasn't able to fly with a payload.
At the end of the objective flights each team had a flight where the planes were just taken for a spin and made to do tricks, just for fun. The blue team's plane managed to take part in this flight, although it had to have all excess weight removed, and it didn't have any functioning landing gear at this point; it had to be launched by spinning the propellor up then throwing it into the air. During this flight, the pilot attempted to fly a loop and ended up flying straight into the ground. The impact was so severe that some of the heavier components were ejected through the front face of the plane.
One of the lecturers saw the plane as they were taking it back inside and he said it's the worst crash damage he'd ever seen. The wing spar and tail boom were fairly thick carbon fibre tubes and they were broken in several places.
Overall it was a pretty fun day.