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Scale Curtiss XP-55 Ascender

Larry B

70cc twin V2
Made some more progress this weekend. Windows are all glued in place, and I did it without getting any big glue fingerprints on them! Also got the spinner painted, the serial number painted & a good start on the instrument panel. I still have to make the cut-outs for the exhaust stacks but I'm waiting until I have them all cast in resin. Still a bunch of little stuff to do but it's coming along.
At least now if I get a good day I can go put flight number 6 on this thing.
Larry B

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Doc

50cc
Wow, I finally got to watch that last video, it really does look like a different airplane. It sure doesn't look like the wing loading is that high while in flight. How does it feel when flying?
Doc
 

Larry B

70cc twin V2
Hi Doc,
It seems to be flying like an airplane now with the gyro installed. I can say the last flight was pretty uneventful which is a good thing! I am concerned about the high wing loading but there is not much I can do about now. I tried to build as light as I could from the very first lay-up in the fiberglass fuse.
I am wondering if being a canard helps with the wing loading, on a conventional airplane the tail actually applies a down force to keep the airplane stable, while a canard has the added lift of the forward surface. A engineer friend of mine ran some numbers and claims that the canard on my model carries 20% of the lift load. If this is the case then it has to help lighten the load that the wing is carrying and thus help to decrease the wing loading.
I don't know enough about the math involved but would it make sense to decrease the wing loading number by 20% to get a more accurate loading number?
Larry B
 

acerc

640cc Uber Pimp
You can build a stand to hold the airplane centered on the cg with it sitting on a scale, place another scale (with a stand) centered on the canard to see how much of the total weight the canard carries. Subtract the canard weight from the total to get the main wings loading. You might be surprised.
I do this, in a way, to see how much I may need to balance an airframe or how much to move around.
 
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