As long as the overall plane weighs 7.0000 gm or a little more (say 7.0001 gm, or as small as your scale reads), and you can get the balance right, where the weight is doesn't matter a lot to the aerodynamics (though it might matter to strength). But first, your plane MUST be at the minimum weight to be competitive.Re: Wright Stuff in Division B!!!
Post by Pleiades on Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:27 pm
That's a very nice plane that you made!! What do you recommend as a wing chord for science olympiad? i was thinking 12 or 13 cm since thats twice as much as the stabilizer chord but i dont want it to weigh to much and have trouble climbing. or does the weight of the wing not affect climbing? Also, how do you bend the ribs?
Heck, just to make it easy to trim and fly at all, it is drastically easier if the plane is light. Heavy planes have to fly faster, turn faster, crash faster, breaking sooner. Its harder to figure out what's going wrong. All bad things. Light planes fly slow, turn slow, crash slow and, paradoxically, break LESS. Much easier to see what is happening and correct it before bad things happen.
So, 12 or 13 cm chord is very doable under these rules at the minimum weight, IF YOU PLAN AHEAD. Much larger planes under past SO rules met this min weight, you can too.
Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI