Transonic RC gliders

[Holtzauge]

A friend of mine sent me this YouTube link which just blew me away: RC gliders doing more than 500 mph, pulling more than 120 g’s and having supersonic (1.25 mach) shock waves on the wing!

 

The video is almost an hour long but well worth the watch IMHO. The guy doing the presentation, Spencer Lisenby, does a great job explaining how it’s done both in terms of theory and the practical aspects.

 

Hope you will enjoy it as much as I did!

[56RAF_Roblex]

 

Turn the sound on because the noise of  RC glider doing over 500 mph is quite scary :-)

[Bullets]

[13Nrv]

insane 

i m struggling to just keep it insight on my screen , how is it possible to keep those beast under control ???

[SYN_Vander]

Cool stuff! Thanks for sharing.

[56RAF_Roblex]

There was a man who used the wind sheer effect to cross the English Channel in a glider at low level.   He started by diving downwind then near the sea turned sharply into wind and pulled up.  The increasing headwind as he climbed increased his airspeed and thus his altitude so he could get back to his original altitude, turn downwind and do it all again until he had got to France.   Obviously this gives nowhere near the return on E that flying in ridge lift does and it was very difficult to keep breaking even.  It was probably a bit stupid as well because he had no plan for what happened if it turned out to be impossible while he was 10 miles from shore at 500ft :-)

Edited November 11, 2017 by 56RAF_Roblex

[Holtzauge]

Glad you guys liked it! If you did not check out the complete video the CFD picture of the wing profile at about 35 min into the video is pretty cool with the M=1.25 shock wave forming at the thickest part of the wing. And the sound of the compressibility effects at 500 mph in the beginning are pretty cool as well.

 

BTW: Nice story about the dynamic flight from England to France Robflex. There is another nice video about the theory behind DS and an animation about how to do it IRL in a glider here.

[56RAF_Roblex]

 

BTW: Nice story about the dynamic flight from England to France Robflex. There is another nice video about the theory behind DS and an animation about how to do it IRL in a glider here.

 

Here is an English version which seems to use some of the same graphics 

Edited November 11, 2017 by 56RAF_Roblex

[Guest deleted@50488]

[56RAF_Roblex]

Looks like they were using the L-23 Super Blanik.  Probably because it has a metal construction and is G-Rated +6/-3 .  Dynamic soaring puts a lot of strain on the wings.  I used to fly the more common L-13 version which was only +5/-2.5 though I admit I never did anything over -1 G and never tried dynamic soaring;  never heard of it :-)