About Slowstick wings

Are you trying to build a plane like the GWS Slowstick? I have one and by a cursory measurement, the leading is about 3/4" off the aluminum tube and the trailing edge is about 3/8" off the tube. Give or take

Balance is achieved by sliding the wing back and forth, Is this close enough?

Wan

snipped-for-privacy@toast.net (Wan) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

Thanks Wan ! Your help is appreciated.

I'm building a pusher plane with a Slowstick style wing for aerial photography. (These winge are ideal for AP because they are light, slow and produce lots of lift.

Glowboy

Glowbou, We have four things in common. RC airplanes, aerial photography (The reason I became interested in RC), electric model planes and pusher planes. What a coincidence.

I wonder if your camera is light enough? Will it be a digital camera? You may need a stronger landing gear than found on the GWS Slowstick. Good luck on your AP.

Wan

snipped-for-privacy@toast.net (Wan) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

My current airplane looks a little like a Pushy Cat with a Wingo wing. It flies OK, but suffers a poor rate of climb with the S400 1:1.85 and 9x6 prop. I hope the new tubular fuselage with a Slowstick wing will be better. I almost forgot; and my new brushless ;-) I took the idea of a tubular fuse on RC Groups, in the Aerial Photography section.

I use to fly my AP planes over inhabited areas and I find pusher planes safer in case of a crash. Maybe I'm wrong, but I also believe that a forward looking camera suffers less from the relative movement of the plane than a camera mounted on the side. By the way, my camera is an Aiptek Mini Pencam 1.3 and it weights only 48g without batteries.

Good luck with your AP too !

GB

I got into RC for the very reason of AP. It was a scratch built plane weighing about 12 lbs, I had intended to put a Nikon 35 mm in a compartment at the bottom close to the CG. However your statement;

forward looking camera suffers less from the relative movement of the plane than a camera mounted on the side.

May be incorrect. I was told that to get the smoothest ride on a ship, one should book a cabin closest to midship. The bow and the aft deck rise and fall the most. I believe this notion applies to aircraft as well?

Wan

snipped-for-privacy@toast.net (Wan) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

I was not talking about the tremors that affects a flying aircraft, but about the angular movement of a landscape seen from a certain moving point of view. I mean, if you look at the road through the windshield of a car, you wont see the landscape defiling as fast as if you look through the side windows. Though, I uderstand your point and it seems quite logical. My own experience with a CMOS camera taught me to avoid as much as possible sideway views, because CMOS chips are quite sensible to any movement. I flown my AP plane with this config, and all my picts were blury. The next flight was with the camera looked forward and almost all the pix were OK.

GB

Yes, but cameras don't get seasick :)

Wherever you mount the camera, it will have the same angular movement for a given roll/yaw/pich movement, and that will relate to a certain amount of blur.

Unless you can be sure your plane is more stable in pitch and yaw, than pitch and roll, a forward looking camera will be no worse than one looking down.

Most people stick then at the CG, simply to balance the plane with the extra weight.

decent photos come from low engine vibration and calm air and a fast shutter speed.

Ah. Well of course of you drive in a circle, the view from the front is blurry, but the thing you are driving round is sharp...you can mount a ideways camera and get sharp pictures simply by flying a big circle round the thing you want to photograph.

Or for straigh down, pull teh plane up into a stall and snap as the speed falls to nothing :)

Now I see. You are correct about pointing a camera side ways while a vehicle is moving. I was a professional wedding photographer. Took hundreds of photos a week.

I remembered pointing my camera side ways in a military jeep and the picture was blurred until I used a 1/1000 shutter speed. Still the jostling of the jeep caused some blur. Electric planes are ideal for AP as we could shut the motor down during exposure and restart. No vibrations then.

Any other ideas?

Wan

You're right about most, TNP. Don't forget, he's using electric motors and they can be shut down just before exposure of the film/digital image and restart. There would not be any vibrations. Don't you think?

Wan

The Natural Philosopher wrote in news:cbftl0$ot$2$ snipped-for-privacy@news.demon.co.uk:

Yep ! And if you have a control line plane you always get nice aerial self portraits.

GB

TY for any info Mike

snipped-for-privacy@toast.net (Wan) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

I wanted you to see these AP planes made by a guy on RC groups. Mine is going to be a crossbreed between these two models, except for the tube I prefered to build from styrofoam to save weight.

GB

snipped-for-privacy@netzero.net (Mike R.) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

Most setups simply use a servo to press on the shutter button. Mine is a HS-81 with a small ball bearing fitted in the tip of the servo arm. (The BB rolling smoothly over the shutter buton avoids the servo arm to crush it.) Some other prefer more sophisticated and lighter systems using an electronic trigger directly connected between the camera and the RX. But if you have an expensive camera, these custom connections necessitate to open the camera housing, wich will void your camera warranty.

GB