Public Lab Research note


Test flight with repaired Delta

by patcoyle | March 26, 2013 21:01 26 Mar 21:01 | #6549 | #6549

Flew a short test flight in Livermore CA with repaired Delta spar pocket, dual A1200s in bottle-bottom rig, Digispark triggered CHDK.

I first reported on this spar pocket QC issue in update to note on initial experience with SX260HS.

The spar pocket problem and fix are shown in these photos.

This was just a test, nothing was optimized: the picavet rig was not balanced with weights to improve orientation, the IR camera was low on batteries and stopped early into the flight, there was no gps tracker on flight. Several of the >300 images (nominal 5 sec interval) were oblique enough that there were issues in the resulting map.

Quick stitched map of results

Stewart Long's archive and below:


5 Comments

are there prospects for stabilizing with dual tails on either wing?

Is this a question? Click here to post it to the Questions page.

Reply to this comment...


Definitely could. Has attachment points at edges and center. However, just for convenience, I' prefer not to have too. If persists, may need to. Into The Wind also suggested swap edge spars and/or inspect for irregularities.

Reply to this comment...


tail correction can work a bit but it isn't the best for stability, because the amount of drag the tail adds will change with the wind.

the leading edge spar pockets are a little loose to allow removal of the spars, and this can lead to leaning in the kite, because the spars aren't always positioned evenly. I suggest pushing the two leading edge spars all the way up towards the front of the kite before attaching the spreader. The spreader will hold the leading edge spars in place.

Reply to this comment...


Thanks Mathew, I'll give it a try. I had such good results with previous Delta without tails, I'd prefer not to have to use them. However, with the Sutton FF 16, I don't even try to fly without fuzzy tail.

I forget how, but I stumbled into a nice surprise on http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/hiddenecologies/ when saw a nice image of your Tyvek Delta in the January 13th, 2012 post, A trip to the Mojave Desert.

Reply to this comment...


that was a fun trip!

In high winds I've put a tail on my deltas to prevent overflight, especially when I'm reeling in string. The bridle position could be readjusted but adding a tail is just much easier.

tails can serve many purposes, I would just caution about trying to fix an asymmetrical or unstable delta with asymmetrical tails.

Reply to this comment...


Login to comment.