Wing loading...

R

Richord

New member
Since one of the most important factors of how a plane will initially fly is wing loading...

Does everyone seem to feel that if the wing loading is set in RF to the aircrafts actual wing loading spec.'s (overall weight in ounces/(wing area in square inches/144) is fairly acurate? Or is the consensus that is should be a bit higher or lower to compare to the RL flight characteristics.
 
Wing loading

As a general rull, the R.F. defalt of 100 works on most planes, execpt foamies, and space shuttles.
When you start changing lift, you must consider wheather or not to change lift on, Stab, Vertical Stab, Fuselage, and other parts with lift.
A simpler way to play with the orignal edit, is by adding to or takeing away weight from the Fuselage. This will most often not impact C/G all that much, but can have a real impact on the way a plane flies.
Remember, REAL is subjective. It in the eye of the beholder!
 
Fusealage Lift

Wing loading is important but theres other stuff that is all ways over looked. The Fuselage add lift depending of its design. A flat wood bottom adds lift just from positive incidence. That is why all these large 400 scaled up modeled crap AV float like blimps. The RC sim seams to be more real when you are flying a RC in the 30- 120 range. The lighter you go and the heavier you go it does seam to lose some of the realistic handling


There are setting for Fuse drag and lift and how the fuselage can change the CS effect because of it adding more lift up from and not in back.
 
I Pm'd someone about the Eflite Extra 260 model they did, because the wing loading came out to around 8.5 and I thought that was light. But he stated that he felt the plane really did fly like the sim...

He stated that RF doesn't not calc. the battery in the dry weight/wing loading.

However, it does adjust the dry wing loading with lighter/heavier batteries.

So, does the dry wing loading account for all the weight since there is no fuel? Or should I reduce some of the wing loading?

In other words, if my plane in RL has an overall weigth of 2lbs. and has a wing loading of 12, should the RF dry wing loading be 12 or should it be less (taking the battery weight out of the calc?
 
"Dry" weight & loading is calculated without the effects of fuel, etc.

Dry weight in turn is usually less than actual observed loading.

However that particular plane is built extremely light, with light ply formers, etc.

The intent with that model was to get the performance in the sim to mimic the real world.

Since sims in turn are not perfect, we adjust accordingly.

For instance, I also find that if you place the C.G. EXACTLY where it would go on the real world model, on a model in the sim, the behaviour is not quite the same as in the real world.

Typically the C.G. must be adjusted an additional and variable percentage further back to get similiar idiosyncratic behaviour.

So do not sweat the figures in the physics editor, instead sweat the behaviour of the modeled aircraft.

A real world versus a sim model comparison yields the greatest fidelity.

But in turn to get that right, requires a methodical set of tests on both the modeled plane and the real world one.... something which most novices at editing do not do, nor understand how to do well.

I use a whole litany of comparison points.

e.g.

- Downline ( power off ) behaviour
- Downline ( power full ) behaviour
- Downline ( power 50% ) behaviour
- Upline ( power off ) behaviour
- Upline ( power full ) behaviour
- Upline ( power 50% ) behaviour
- Level flight 100% power
- Level flight 80% power
- Nose Up/Down after power off from 100%
- Nose Up/Down inverted ( amount of change ) after power off from 100%

etc. etc. etc.

With that particular plane I modeled it while at the field flying a real one, with laptop on hand.
 
I could tell that you put some time into getting that one right... Your airfoils and such were populated correctly, where as the AV for the Extreme Flight Extra 300 had the same airfoils for the horizontal and vertical stabs as the main wings. I had to change them to the flat balsa... Perhaps that was done to mimic how this individuals aircraft was flying. But the Eflight and the Extreme Flight models were like night and day. And since they are similar planes, I would imagine they should exhibit some similar flight characteristics if setup with the same hardware.

I don't suppose you have had the chance to fly the Extreme Flight Extra in real life to compare?

Or perhaps try the AV in RF and you'll see what I mean...

Once I get her airborne, I will start to compare the RL vs. RF and adjust accordingly. I'm just trying to get close enough to get an idea of what to expect. Crashed my last plane beyond repair and I've taken a liking to this one... :D
 
It makes sense to get the wing loading, component weights, etc. in the ballpark. Fact is on the sim there are many variables that are not present in real life RC but have a dramatic effect on the physics flight model.
 
Junkboy999 said:
Wing loading is important but theres other stuff that is all ways over looked. The Fuselage add lift depending of its design. A flat wood bottom adds lift just from positive incidence. That is why all these large 400 scaled up modeled crap AV float like blimps. The RC sim seams to be more real when you are flying a RC in the 30- 120 range. The lighter you go and the heavier you go it does seam to lose some of the realistic handling


There are setting for Fuse drag and lift and how the fuselage can change the CS effect because of it adding more lift up from and not in back.
Click to expand...

Another thing I think should be added, just as a comment to this post:

Different wait aspects across the fuselage.

Your fuselage doesn't weight the exact same weight along the entire thing, and there is no way to edit the larger sides to weigh more, and the smaller sides to weigh less. I think this would make RealFlight even more realistic, as it has always been a problem for me when I make aircraft or edit them.

Also: I agree with the Lighter/Heavier thing. The 100 seems to work for the actual model size, and sometimes smaller or slightly larger Physics, however I think that the Drag and Lift Factors of Real flight for the fuselage are a bit off. They don't seem to simulate the curves correctly. I also imagine that they can';t make it 100% real, that would be a bit difficult, they have already done an amazing job! Good work!
 
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