3D ships good for thermals?

| Not for the first time, I watched the hawks spinning lazily up the thermals | around the edges of our flying field. I think I even got a bobble or two the | few times I tried to ride one up, but it could have been just wishful | thinking. It occurs to me, just hazily daydreaming at this point, that 3D | ships seem ideal for casual playing around. Even if their stubby wings | aren't the ideal shape for low drag gliding,

Not even close ...

| the wing loading and high alpha recovery make up for a lot of woes.

The wing loadings of the new electric 3D planes are pretty low, but not as low as that of a glider.

| Or maybe looks are deceiving, and they glide like bricks with the | power off.

From what I've seen, they do ...

| Anyway, I'm thinking almost anything beats a winch start, and having | all that power on tap would be nice. What do you think? I'm aware | that it seems to defeat the purpose on several levels...

Get a strong enough thermal, and you could keep them up in it, but it's going to be hard to find strong enough thermals.

You know, they do make powered gliders that would work much better :)

Personally, I do a lot of sloping and some thermalling with my XE2 flying wing with an Astroflight 020 brushless and 3 cell iRate LiPo pack. It'll go vertical when I tell it to, but it's light enough that it will thermal as well, especially if I put a folding prop on it (though I've yet to find a *good* folding prop that's under 7" that works well when it wants to push it at 20k+ rpm.)

I have seen a FAI pylon racer catching thermals. The clean lines and reasonable wing loading had this one up for a long time. Not as good as a glider but it was impressive.

Regards

Tom Watson Sydney Australia

Got to admit I don't know squat about 3-d and I don't own a glider, but if you just want something to laze around with and take advantage of the available thermals get a sig lt-25 or 40 they'll soar forever.. If you want electric set an lt-25 up and you'll be all set may not 3-d, but it'll ride the thermals or just the relaxing float around and ya got the source of a trainer in the need arises. Hmmmmmmm! maybe they will 3-D a bit my instructor used to hang my lt-40 on the prop and torque roll it with a supetiger 40 on it.

tomb