Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Flight Control Suggestion

Flight RC airplane just like the real airplanes, models depend on control surfaces to maneuver and fly, the basics being the elevators, ailerons and rudder. Some of the more sophisticated ones might have spoilers and flaps and leading-edge wing flaps.

Elevators - control nose up or nose down attitude of the airplane. This, in a nutshell, is how it works. When the pilot pitches the nose up (pulling back on the stick), the wing angle is changed as related to the RC airplanes forward movement. As the angle of the wing is increased,more of the lower wing surface is revealed to the oncoming air and an increase in engine power will cause the airplane to climb. Increasing AOA too much without a corresponding power increase will result in a stall situation.

Rudder inputs are used to counter the effect known as adverse yaw when turning the model. This is the tendency of the right extended (down) aileron to produce drag on a left hand turn causing the model to want to turn to the right.
Ailerons ?These are located on the trailing edge of the wings near the wingtips. These surfaces will roll the model to the left or to the right. If the aileron stick is moved to the right, the model will roll to the right because less lift is produced on the right wing. This can be explained as follows. When a right roll input is intoduced, the right aileron will move up into the airstream and the left aileron will move down. Therefore the airflow rushing over the right wing no longer flows smoothly, creating less lift on that wing causing the model to roll to the right. It works the same way for the left wing.

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