Just gonna start a thread for my club, and update it as time goes by.
Upcoming NEAT stuff:
I've been asked to do a "banner pull" INSIDE the atrium of the Bank of America building here in Charlotte. I'm custom building a plane for the event, taking one of my "Frenzy Foamy" planes and making some changes to make it less radical in performance and increas the wing area slightly. Power will come from a Hacker A20-22L motor and X-series controller using a Kokam 3-cell 1500ma li-poly pack. All up weight is expected to be in the 14-16 ounce range.
For Radio, since I was at the LHS picking up some servos for the plane, I decided to upgrade a bit and sprung for a complete Spektrum DX-6 system. $219 at the LHS, but hey, you support these guys, right? The atrium of the building is chock full of cell phones, wi-fi computer stuff, and microwave signals, interference and air ducting that can bounce signals all over creation, so this will be a really good test of the systems capability in such an RF Noisey environment.
The plane itself is a proven design (for me at least) but I reduced the control surface sizes and added a couple of inches of span for more area. The flying area is about 100-125' per side, and 50-60' high, WITH OBSTACLES, so it will require slow, careful, smooth flying to make the 8-10 minute flight without pranging something. My biggest fear is that there may be some TREES inside .. . . or that the Banner being towed will cause a controllability problem.
I've already figured out how to land. . with the banner acting like the tail on a Kite, it ought to be super easy to hover the plane. . then just pluck it from the air.
One note. . it's just amazing how uninformed the Public at Large seems to be concerning the dynamics involved in pulling a banner behind a plane. The woman I talked to had no concern at all for things like drag, CG shift, air movement turbulence due to the AC system in the building, or the fact that some rich Lawyer might not appreciate a 16 ounce hit on the head. Luckily, the Demo will be on a Sunday, when most of the "bigwigs" in Corporate Life will not be at work, so things should go pretty smoothly. I find myself wondering if the girl is a blonde. . .
. .heck . .I wonder if they'd appreciate a rolling harrier. . .