christchurch and district model flying club

Soaring dvd, by martin burr

 'allo 'allo 'allo what’s all this then, I thought as I stumbled around on the Internet and found a company specialising in DVD's for Soaring! They had quite a few titles to choose from too. From Soaring Utah, to Secrets of Thermal Soaring 12&3 with Performance Tuning For
Sailplanes in the middle. Which one to go for? They are all about  £28 delivered to your door from the good old USA, so after a bit of head scratching, I went for the Performance Tuning DVD, having recently got a nice plane I thought any extra knowledge, will not go amiss. So the card was prised out of my wife's vice-like grip, and the numbers sent into the electric wonderland of t'internet and then I waited...

During this time, I had a further look around Radio Carbon Art's website and found lots of interesting bits of info. The person behind the company is Paul Naton, who is heavily into our hobby/sport and competes in F3F/B/J, and does a lot of building and set-up work for other fliers, so he must know a thing or two. Also his personal website has amongst other things a short video clip, called How To Land a Glider! This  is WELL worth watching, please turn your sound on!

So, when magically about 4 days later a parcel appeared I was eager to see what the chap had to say! Well, where to start, the beginning is usually a good place, so I will follow tradition…

There are 13 Chapters covering; Introduction, Tuning Tools, Rig it Right 1&2, Double Neutral, Incidence 1&2, V Tail, C of G, Radio Programming, Adverse Yaw, Differential, Flight Testing . As you can see he covers a lot of ground! It is all well produced and not very American at all, he speaks in quite a gentle way and is very informative, with lots of demonstration and illustrations of the more difficult to understand topics. He uses a Spirit Elite with a 4 servo wing to demonstrate his set up technique, and goes right through the process. Lots of video clips help show the effects of moving the C of G by doing dive tests and how Differential affects the turn.

There is an awful lot of information here well presented and quite watchable too. I will try to summarise his method a bit for you;

       1 Make sure the Wings Fuz and tail are aligned properly .
       2 Make sure servo's etc don't bind and are mechanically centered
(don't use the convenience of the computer Tx too much)
       3 If you find, after test flying, that you consistently have to use
lots of up/down trim to make it fly level then the  wing/tail may be at the
wrong incidence to one another.
       4 Move the C of G back as far as possible to make the plane more
sensitive, and reduce the control throws on the elevator to compensate.

All of this is to achieve minimum control surface movement for maximum effect, and least drag! I am glad I bought this DVD as it has helped me understand more of our Hobby and it unravels some more of the complicated mystery of flight! Sadly however, it does not make the wind blow in the right direction, or make the sun shine, so by the time I get to go and test a modification I have usually forgotten the last one! Anyway it keeps me from the decorating so it must be good!

If you want to go to the websites they can be found at; www.radiocarbonart.com/ and the landing clip is; http://homepage.mac.com/pnaton/Menu2.html Click on WMV 9 Downloads, scroll down to Safe Landings wmv, turn on the sound and watch! I hope this article interests you dear reader, and I hope you all have a good time flying this year, lets hope for some sun and fun,

Byee for Now, Martin.

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