Scioly.org

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?

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.

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

basically this year you should look at a 2 gram prop, .5 gram stab, 1-1.3 gram motor stick, .7-.9 gram tail boom, .8-1 gram wing, .3 for posts, and hooks. Assuming you use the heavy end of the numbers i just posted that leaves a gram to distribute however you want.

Hi!
My friend and I are trying for the wright stuff...and i wanted help with the wings, how do you think is the best way to make the wings so that the plane will go in a circle? because we have some ideas and we wanted advice from an experinced person...we just want some advice...
~Sowji

Check out the wiki on how to make your plane turn: [wiki]Wright_Stuff#Turning[/wiki]

thanks for the help! we need to get all the help we can, so thanks for posting the reply! XD

In addition to the WIKI, search the old scioly.org bulletin board, much info over there that applies.

Also check the Wright Stuff event page on the national SO website www.soinc.org many links there to help for Wright Stuff.

And there is a Wright Stuff group on yahoo to get help from.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

what is the best thing to cover the wing with ?
Tissue paper or a plastic film???

I personally think tissue paper would work better because it comes in different colors and you need it to be a bright color because to the visible wing rule (the one where the wings have to be clearly visible or you get marked down) and it hard to find and work with plastic film

I'm no expert in this event but here's what I think. If your plane is really light and your not that good with your hands i'd use tissue paper since it's probably easier to work with and heavier than the film. I'm going to make my wing with film and then use tissue paper for part of the stabilizer due to the colored part rule. Either would work so I guess it's just your preference.

plastic film. I'll write info on y tommorw.