My entry to TaylorWatson12's Golden Glider challenge! Pretty much as bare-bones as I could make it, although this has come at the cost of stability to some extent. It has paid off, though, and a steady hand can guide it to about two-thirds down the south runway, or well past the end of Murphy!
Also, note that the inner section of each wing is crafted from high-quality vampire leather, and as such does not cast a shadow. Also that control surface on the central "wing" panel is purely decorative and does nothing useful.
Specifications
General Characteristics
- Created On Android
- Wingspan 21.5ft (6.5m)
- Length 45.7ft (13.9m)
- Height 6.4ft (2.0m)
- Empty Weight 672lbs (304kg)
- Loaded Weight 798lbs (362kg)
Performance
- Wing Loading 8.0lbs/ft2 (39.3kg/m2)
- Wing Area 99.2ft2 (9.2m2)
- Drag Points 290
Parts
- Number of Parts 7
- Control Surfaces 5
- Performance Cost 63
@Skua Alrighty, hit me up man. Glad to hear that you're doing mostly alright at least.
@TheLatentImage eh... Mostly. I'll come on Hangouts in a bit
Skua, you doing alright out there buddy?
I'm a fan of minimal designs! Good stuff!
@Nethereal thanks, I really appreciate that you took the time to give such detailed feedback. I'll be sure to check out your planes and send a few upvotes your way!
Structural wings really are heavier than regular ones, despite both of them being listed as 22 lbs - I think that's just because they don't have a defined weight, and are instead dependent on area. Perhaps they should have "mass per m^2 " or something. However, I just tested quickly and the difference was actually smaller than I thought. For small wings, the structural one was around 20% heavier, and for large ones, about 30% heavier.
I went back to check the flex issue; under hard alternating pitching, I do see some flex, but not enough to affect flight at all, so I'm afraid I honestly don't know why we're getting different results. I'm on Android as well. I guess I never noticed it before because I was only building it for distance on this challenge, and therefore flew it very steadily and cautiously. That said, it also has less drag points listed in the app than on this site, and occasionally spawns in rotated 90° in the yaw axis, so I'm gonna have to go with my glider being haunted or something. If I build another glider, I'll definitely take your advice in to account. Thanks again!
@Skua I took the time to double check things: Structural and regular wings have the exact same weight, so you shouldn't have any weight concerns about using them.
I also tested your glider on low and high settings in SP (android). The flex was evident much more in low than in high. I would say about 3x more flex in low. (Repeated oscillations on your pitch will accentuate the flex I am talking about)
@Nethereal I don't see it flexing at all. What physics setting are you playing on? Using structural wings would also make it heavier, and require that the control surfaces are moved from where they currently are - that being as far from the CoM as possible in their respective axes, so they can be as small as possible
Like I said, use some structural wings (they don't flex so much as the regularwings)
@Nethereal what difficulties did you have with it? I found it to be unsteady, but everything happened so slowly that it was pretty easily countered. Everything I tried doing to fix it reduced the gliding distance, so I kept it as it was
Very difficult to control and not a great glider. Try increasing wing surface area and mixing in some structural wings for rigidity in the right places
@Skua No problem! If everyone upvotes eachother then the challenge is good for everyone!
@TaylorWatson12 cheers mate