Posted by Chris Anderson on December 28, 2008 at 11:00pm
After testing the new 4-channel EasyGlider Pro and finding it a great flier but without as much internal space as our beloved 3-channel EasyStar, people suggested I just modify some EasyGlider wings (which have ailerons) and use them on the EasyStar.
So I did that. It was a pretty easy mod--you just have to carve off a little foam from the Easy Glider wings and thread a aileron servo y-adapter through the EasyStar's existing servo holes.
How does it fly? Just so-so (see video). It's slower, which is nice, but because the body is now too short for the wings (in aerodynamic terms, the plane is now "short-coupled"), the elevator control is too twitchy and it tends to wheel about the sky a bit. Also, the ailerons tend to create as much drag as they do banking power, so turns can quickly devolve into a wing-over dive. (Ailerons also tend to be pretty ineffective at slow speed, which is often the case with gliders)
I'm sure I can fix this with differential throw on the ailerons (make them go down more than they go up) and limiting the throw of the elevator a bit more. But the truth is that both the EasyGlider and an unmodified EasyStar fly better than the hybrid of the two. I'm going to stick with this frankenplane and tweak it to fly better, since I need a beater aircraft I can use for UAV and sensor tests at the park. But I doubt it will ever become my preferred UAV platform for standard use.
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