Airfoils for Flying Wings
With the advent of the latest Northrop flying wing (the B-2 Stealth bomber) I expect there will be a revival of interest in flying wings and tailless airplanes. Unfortunately, I also expect 40-year-old mistakes to be repeated as people attempt to rediscover how to design flying wings. I have been developing and campaigning tailless models for many years. Many are now competitive with or superior to conventional models in their class. The flying wing configuration is well worth investigating, but it is important to do it right. When people discuss flying wings there is a lot of ballyhoo about the concept of stable airfoils. Reflexed airfoils (discussed later) are usually held up as examples of these magic "stable airfoils." There is no such thing as a stable airfoil! Nor is there such a thing as an unstable airfoil, for that matter.
Thing III
I have made a concerted effort to eliminate unnecessary parts of flying objects. My earlier free flight designs successfully eliminated the horizontal tail and then the vertical tail. The Thing takes this process one step beyond the limits of good judgement and eliminates the wings, too. The lift-to-drag ratio was virtually eliminated along with the wings, but in the immortal last words of Otto Lilienthal, "sacrifices must be made."
The Art and Science of Pseudoaerodynamics
MODELERS, just like all airplane designers, are perpetually exploring the fascinating gray area between art and science. There is much of both in the process of creating a model which is attractive and flies well. The science of aerodynamics is well documented elsewhere. It is the purpose of this article to shed some light on the less well documented forces affecting the model airplane.
Cyrano II
"OF COURSE you can make a flying wing model fly, but it will never be competitive with conventional models." This statement has appeared in various forms in several model magazines over the years, and I can't begin to count the number of times I have heard it in conversation. As a lover of unconventional configurations I felt this was a prejudice which should not be allowed to go unchallenged. The flying wing has several inherent advantages over the conventional layout and should, all other things being equal, be superior in performance. I decided that the way to kill this prejudice was to develop a competitive flying wing model and win the Nats with it. This was a tall order, to say the least.
Free Flight: Duration
THINGS WEIRD and enjoyable. There is great satisfaction in getting any Free Flight model to fly well. It is an old saying that all models are beautiful when they are high overhead with the sun shining through the tissue. For me, if the model overhead is unconventional or just plain weird, it adds some extra spice to the experience. The challenge of unusual models is part of the attraction. There is more feeling of achievement when you make a new and strange airplane fly. The second attraction of the unconventional is the potential for improvements in performance. Remember, every breakthrough model which led to the "conventional" designs we fly now was a radical innovation when it first appeared. Small modifications to conventional practice will lead to small changes in performance. Radical experiments can lead to either dramatic improvements or equally dramatic failures. I know! I have had my share of both. The successes make the failures worthwhile.
