Friday 6 September 2013

Test flight with modified wing tips

At the beginning of July we managed to conduct some test flights with modified wing tips for improvement of manoeuvrability and directional stability. We mentioned about their design and manufacturing process in March. Their layout was designed according to principles explained in "Tailless aircraft in theory and practice" - Karl Nickel, very useful textbook by the way. 
Below you can find short movie summarizing that stage of the project and test flights. 

 

As we expected, flight characteristics improved a lot in comparison to the first test flight, it confirmed that layout of the geometry and position of the center of the gravity was designed in the right way. Having that confidence we decided to proceed to the next stage of the project and focus on detailed structural design. We will cover that subject on the next posts, stay tuned.