Have you ever heard of the Red Bull Flugtag? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Y2F1320QI

We were asked to participate and assemble a team this past spring for the upcoming weekend in Long Beach. Long story short, if you in and around the Long Beach area this weekend we will be sending it off the Long Beach pier with our own flying machine that we have been working on now for the past 2 months...

Anyway, any bets on if she will fly and if so, how far? The winner will get a free T shirt and hat...AND WAIT there is more...if you guess the distance and make it to our fly-in in October you will also get a free case of beer Why not make it interesting anyhow.

Here is our craft and team photo. There is a fan favorite vote and thats very easy to do. You can text in a vote to 72855. Our team number is LB17. The easiest way is to go to the website and vote online. http://www.redbull.com/en/events/1331590594102/red-bull-flugtag-2013

Thanks for your vote and lack of confidence in our craft... Im betting we are going to get real wet in front of a 110,000 people and we may go 50 feet or so...

Our design comes from a kit called "the pig". The local EAA group here has helped us on design as well

Aircraft and push cart


Push cart


Pilot and craft...we are weighing the craft for CG load this evening. The pilot seating placement will change obviously


Our team


Whats your bet??

AKT

That video was awesome (#6 was my fav). Looks like a blast.... voted.

I think you have a solid design with good potential. Hopefully you don't fly off and hit a boat!

How high off the water is the launch platform?

Awesome!! My guess is 52ft

I may have some good news for you. The "Pig" is originally a low performance training glider designed by a guy named Mike Sandlin. He has a website http://m-sandlin.info/pig/pig.htm and the Pig is a follow-on to a fully soar-able primary glider called the BUG.

So, the basic design, if built straight and according to plan... will actually glide fairly well compared to other flugtag washing machines and Titanic ships and flying toasters.

I noticed on your photo that your flugtag glider does not appear to have a vertical tail or rudder. If not, you might want to think about that famous video from ABC's Wide World of Sports, regarding "the agony of defeat".

The big question is if, or what, you win by having a glider go further than the others. Do you win anything for that, or does the most spectacular crash win?

Any BCP'ers who are interested, the Sandlin Bug (biplane) and GOAT (monoplane) gliders are cheap, easy to build, and are apparently shitloads of fun with a reasonable degree of safety and structural sanity.

That looks like a fine machine. My guess is 45.7 feet. Representin' the 907!!!

It looks to me like Sandlin took his design from a couple of brothers from Dayton....

I'm guessing you do as good as the B-25 (1:00 mark).

mountainmatt wrote:I'm guessing you do as good as the B-25 (1:00 mark).

Ground effect in full effect!!!!!

Glad you posted this. I hadn't noticed that it was going to be here. I'll look for you down there.

A challenge and a possible thread hijack (sorry). Forum owner feel free to slice this off into another thread if deemed appropriate.

This competition is an interesting challenge from a designer's point of view. The B-25 guys did the best so far apparently. Since we have plenty of clever guys on this board, an interesting exercise is how would you design a system to break the distance record (once AKT and his bad-ass Alaska posse wins it this year)? Here's how I would do it...

The span is limited but not the chord. So within reason you could increase the wing area a little as needed. Aspect ratio is all well and good when you are building a glider, but it appears to my non-degreed self that you want lifting area more than span in this situation.

Stability and control about the pitch axis seems to be a huge cause of spectacular failure in this competition. Ground effect also seems to be a primary factor in all the successful flights, from the B-25 to several others. The low launch height limits the available "power", so ground effect is a biggie.

So we might take a page from history and revisit the un-successful efforts of Samuel Pierpont Langley's "aerodrome" It is shown here on its flugtag-like launch platform: http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_ ... seboat.jpg

It is basically an equal tandem wing. The reason for this config. is that it puts two lifting surfaces with flugtag-legal span into ground effect, and provides a distance between the two wings to enable pitch control, by using the forward wing as a "canard" control surface. Pretty simple to move the pilot fore and aft to find the right CG to make this controllable.

So once you solve the problem Langley had in 1903 (torsional rigidity during catapult launch acceleration), you stand a good chance of a flyable, controllable aircraft. This was proved out when Glenn Curtiss, in a bizarre development of his lawsuit with the Wright Bros., flew the Aerodrome over 3000 feet in ground effect, many times further than the Wright's aircraft original flight.

My hypothesis is that putting two equal span wings into ground effect would allow the longest achieved glide distance, for a span-limited aircraft having very limited energy from gravity. If this subject is of interest to people on this forum, we can go to the next step of how to maximize the available energy to achieve the longest flight.

There are several aero degrees and college professors and real-life engineer type folks lurking in these waters, so feel free to pipe up and disembowel my approach to shattering the flugtag distance record.

EZFlap wrote:A challenge and a possible thread hijack (sorry). Forum owner feel free to slice this off into another thread if deemed appropriate.

This competition is an interesting challenge from a designer's point of view. The B-25 guys did the best so far apparently. Since we have plenty of clever guys on this board, an interesting exercise is how would you design a system to break the distance record (once AKT and his bad-ass Alaska posse wins it this year)? Here's how I would do it...

The span is limited but not the chord. So within reason you could increase the wing area a little as needed. Aspect ratio is all well and good when you are building a glider, but it appears to my non-degreed self that you want lifting area more than span in this situation.

Stability and control about the pitch axis seems to be a huge cause of spectacular failure in this competition. Ground effect also seems to be a primary factor in all the successful flights, from the B-25 to several others. The low launch height limits the available "power", so ground effect is a biggie.

So we might take a page from history and revisit the un-successful efforts of Samuel Pierpont Langley's "aerodrome" It is shown here on its flugtag-like launch platform: http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_ ... seboat.jpg

It is basically an equal tandem wing. The reason for this config. is that it puts two lifting surfaces with flugtag-legal span into ground effect, and provides a distance between the two wings to enable pitch control, by using the forward wing as a "canard" control surface. Pretty simple to move the pilot fore and aft to find the right CG to make this controllable.

So once you solve the problem Langley had in 1903 (torsional rigidity during catapult launch acceleration), you stand a good chance of a flyable, controllable aircraft. This was proved out when Glenn Curtiss, in a bizarre development of his lawsuit with the Wright Bros., flew the Aerodrome over 3000 feet in ground effect, many times further than the Wright's aircraft original flight.

My hypothesis is that putting two equal span wings into ground effect would allow the longest achieved glide distance, for a span-limited aircraft having very limited energy from gravity. If this subject is of interest to people on this forum, we can go to the next step of how to maximize the available energy to achieve the longest flight.

There are several aero degrees and college professors and real-life engineer type folks lurking in these waters, so feel free to pipe up and disembowel my approach to shattering the flugtag distance record.

This is awesome EZ! Keep it coming.

We do not have a rudder system or vertical fin by design from some of the local EAA builders here. YES this is a big concern of mine. Zero steering capabilities. Wind Fx is 5-15mph on Saturday. Hopefully its not a cross wind or we are toast!

They also have a new height restriction for the aircraft. The B25 sits about 12-15' up on a push cart, thus allowing it to be almost 60' in the air. The new rules only allow the craft to be 5' up on a cart. Ground effect is the contest. Our goal is to reach 5-7mph on the platform as it exists the push cart. It will then dive about 35' to reach 10mph and the PIG should fly from there. Again, not having a rudder system I really think we are toast unless we can keep her pointed into the wind some how.

You can watch us on Saturday on the Red Bull Flugtag web site. Its a 10 minute delay. We are team number 17 to launch.

AKT

AKT

A piece of white foam-board taped to each end of the horizontal stabilizer (like a B-25) will do wonders for going in a straight line. EAA guys are great, but we have members who are brain surgeons and we have members that are brain dead. Look at Mike Sandlin's website, see videos of his gliders flying (including PIG),and check for vertical tails.

I'm not saying that a vertical tail will solve all the deficiencies of that design, I'm saying that no vertical will guarantee an additional problem on this configuration. The one and only configuration where you could theoretically get away with no vertical is the Horten or Northrop swept flying wing, which does not lend itself to this competition at all. Trained aero's please jump in and set me straight here if I'm incorrect.

Just curious... what is the material and surface texture of the flight deck at this event? Is it something you could successfully apply a lot of friction to easily? I have an evil plan for next year

After watching the videos of several flugtag flights using "airplane" shaped gliders, it is obvious that the biggest single problem is that the gliders are being launched in a stalled or nearly stalled condition. The limited height, and now the limited height of the launch cart, makes this problem worse. Probably done on purpose by the event lawyers.

I love beating lawyers.

Their rules say no "stored energy" bungees, springs, pulleys. Another big obstacle. I think we can beat that. (They don't say that we can't bring Sir Isaac Newton up from the grave to help us.)

What is needed here is clearly just higher airspeed, in conjunction with the lower wing loading (tandem wing, more area per unit of span), so the airplane is not stalled on launch and has a chance to fly.

My chief engineering consultant, Bugs Bunny, had the solution. He leaned over to me, with a carrot dangling from his mouth, and said "Hey Bub, looks like you could use some lee-verage to beat 'dis game".

Here's how it would work... The launch cart is as tall as legal, 5 feet, whatever. The launch cart is also 10 feet LONG. It has one wheel at the rear, and one at the middle. Two small U-2 style outrigger wheels keep it from tilting left or right (thanks, Vick).

The middle wheel is just forward of the CG of the cart/glider assembly and the middle wheel has a BRAKE (yes, a brake). At the front of the launch cart, there is a big curved skid or plate (like the front of a water ski but much larger) that has soft "grabby" rubber on it. This skid is about three feet above the ground.

The glider is attached to the upper rear of the cart.

The ground crew pushes the cart forward until reaching the end of the runway. Let's say these brawny muscle-bound bad-asses have accelerated the cart to 10 MPH.

The middle wheel brake is applied. The nose of the cart pitches forward and down, and the front friction plate rubber engages the runway, and immediately tries to stop the cart. But the inertia of four 180 pound guys, plus all their horsepower (they keep pushing), and the weight of the glider and pilot, continues to move forward (thanks Isaac).

The four guys push upward as well as forward. Their contact points should be near the middle wheel.

The geometry allows the entire cart to pitch forward and "somersault". This has the effect of the 10 MPH velocity being split into two vectors The bottom (contact) portion of the cart goes to zero MPH, and the top/rear of the cart goes to 20 MPH. The glider should rise upward (pronounced "altitude") by 10 feet, then accelerate forward to 20 MPH, and then eventually it would be pulled downward.

The pilot releases the glider from the cart at the maximum forward velocity and angled slightly downward towards the water. The glider will have twice the airspeed, higher altitude than the runway, twice the wing area (tandem wing), and when it gets close to the water it will benefit from twice the ground effect.

The cart, and the four guys, will go ass-over-teakettle into the water. Some care must be put into place to avoid injury, I'm not kidding. This is fun.

OBVIOUSLY a LOT of this will need to be tested, tried again, modified, and rebuilt BEFORE the competition. But my guess is that using this "leverage" to launch it, it can glide 500 feet or more if it has decent controls.

You would completely shatter all previous distance, ingenuity, and style records. The crowds would go berserk. Epic.

You would get away with this ONCE, before they changed the rules.

That is a very clever idea!

49 feet

70 feet.

A little video of our craft for you.

http://vimeo.com/75028329

I made it down and had a blast. It was so crowded getting good photos was hard unless you had been early and staked out a prime location.
But here are a couple.



The preflight fanfare.






The end of the flight.
Who had 70 feet.



Some of the competition

An overwhelming day here in Long Beach at the Flugtag event!

We ended up flying the 3rd farthest. 87'. Not bad considering the team in front of us got 107' and the winning team set a NEW WORLD RECORD of 270' shattering the old record of 220'. I will post more photos when we get back home. A great day in all! Good to see some BCPers there as well! Here is are run. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7bbmqoWsXZc&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D7bbmqoWsXZc

AKT