Team Fliegen:

• Main
• The Team
• The Plan
• The Craft
• The History

Insanitech Website

Red Bull

Flugtag Events

Wings of Rogallo

A Man, A Plan, A Plane: Enalp Anal Panama.

UPDATE (12 Feb, 06): I love my parents.  I mean, I say I'm going to go jump off a pier in a home built aircraft and my mom cant wait to tell all of her friends.  

I make a video that shows my brother driving my truck down a parking lot with my team mate and I hanging out the windows like some wierd cross between The Dukes of Hazard and Road Warrior (see below).  I figure I'll get some flack on the home front.  Nope, my dad calls me and asks why my truck's engine is knocking!

---

UPDATE (10 Feb, 06): Worked on the wing some more...

We decided to do a quick test this afternoon.  Using some stretch film left over the The Pinkening, we covered the prototype wing.  The film is too thin for the final product (and clear, too) but worked well in our limited testing.

Next, we ponted into the wind (NNE 3-5 MPH) and gave it a quick test run.

Wow, that's like real work!  Clearly, we needed to automate the testing process.  Thus, the Isuzu was once again turned into an aeronautical test rig.

Zooming to the other side of the parking lot, we commenced our tests.  I didn't break out the ASI, but estimating the headwind at 5 MPH, it seems like we will be able to generate a good ammount of lift around 15 MPH.  This is tottally achievable off the dock.  

We played around a bit with the AoA and it looks like we will need to be carefull with the gear on our craft.  Last time I didn't have direct control and it is hard for the bushers to moderate this on the fly.  

Don't miss: FP4-A1 Prototype Wing Test Video

---

Now other teams probably wait until after they have actually entered before they start construction, but not us! No sir, we're already out there hacking together the first wing prototype.  Each wing will be 14' in length and have a chord of 4'.  There will be seven wings all joined at the fuselage.

As you can see, we have made several improvements over the original Fliegen Plastik wing design.  The largest change has been the move to a solid trailing edge.  While this will add some weight, it removes the need for the nose spar and deflexor lines.  The tips have been radically reduced in weight and the entire wing is far more solid.  The rear king post will have far less work this year! Finally, the wing will not use chintzy plastic battens this year as, we have built in solid wing spars. The tail plane connectors are not visable in the above picture. This year, however, the tail's staying attached.

This is the basic layout minus the tail connector.  The PVC/ABS junction isn't what you would want to use when plumbing your house but it works great for our purposes.

After laying out the wing, it is glued together.  Actually, it's not so much gluing as solvent welding and is very strong.  Additionally, this reduced complexity wing goes together in about 30 minutes.  All of the actual wings will be put together in a single afternoon.  Note the tail plane attachment near the root of the TE.

Now that's a nice looking wing.  You can see that we have done away with the extra LE shim this year.  The shim added too much weight.  Since we need to fit under 350 lbs (including pilot) we needed to slim the design down a bit.  Also, it didn't seem to work very well. :)

For some reason, I thought the roof was 14' tall in the office.  Looks like it's closer to 13'6".  I guess this is a good time to point out that we have managed to convince the company to provide storage for the craft again this year.

The next step is to cover the wing and do some speed tests in the parking lot.  Stay tuned!