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Maybe a seat that slides to either side for roll control (ala early wright bros) and fore/aft for pitch; and the handlebars provide the fixed point for the pilot to steady himself and leverage his weight/seat around. Perhaps the bars steer a little for yaw, or just use foot controls for rudder...

I think the inspiration for a flying motorcycle has been around for a while. Here are a couple more that had trouble with too little wing area. Still it keeps the juices flowing.

Here are some real life examples :) grabbed from Motorcycle Art - webBikeWorld

Like an X-29 but slower A couple of posts ago I decided to look into an asymmetric layup for the wing skins in order to generate some bending-torsion coupling that would give my wing some wash-out under load DESPITE having forward sweep and a shear center aft of the center of pressure. This...

That was a nice video to watch...It seems he wasn't concerned about the trim drag of the high mounted prop, but just the airflow at the prop. Maybe I shouldn't care so much and press on.

I'm still thinking about one vs two motor pods. With one (my current plan), I need (analytically) over 5 degrees of elevator to trim out the forward pitching moment (plus a couple of degrees of rudder). That extra trim drag could be avoided/reduced with two motor pods, but then I get more...

At least the solar panels are in the wing, so a second set of wings can use the same spar design (molds) for the solar wings model. The weight won't add to spar loads except at landing, but my caps are over designed for negative g. Just need to check the fuselage and landing gear with the extra...

I was just using John.Roo's imaginary 6m2 1kw panel from his post as a baseline. If I look at Amazon's available flexible solar panels it looks like 50-55 lbs and maybe $1500 for 1kw worth, but that's for the manufacturer's claimed output (reviews say to expect a lot less). I currently only...

my ultralight sailplane design right now is 32:1 at 64 ft/sec (44 mph) and 485 lb mtow which works out 120 ft/min down normally ...at 50:1 it would be 77 ft/min down. the 43 ft/min difference at that weight requires about 500w delivered (so about 850w from the panels with motor/prop/esc...

I was just reminded of the Solar Riser. 2.6 kw motor with reduction belt, 30V nicad battery 350 Watts of solar cells. the operation called for a 1-1/2 hour charge on ground for a 3 to 5 minute self-launch. Recharge in flight is possible. This was 43 years ago in 1979. Makes me think about...

With my light wing loading the gust loads become a factor in my envelope (5.7g per the basic glider criteria) Bumping up just a little to 6gs allows for potential weight over-run for the one off "prototype" . It also allows for future battery weight increases if my marginal pack allows you to...

That's pretty close to my project goals for Echo: MTOW = 220 kg Vne = 185 kph Price? Well it's a home-built structure (no price estimate yet, but really its just materials, molds and fixtures, (contract out canopy?) plus smaller electric pod maybe $30K-$35K?) Conventional, auto hook up...

Stall Behavior (revisited) I was thinking about the local lift coefficient approach I’d used to satisfy myself I would have reasonable stall behavior. It revolved around having somewhat lower local lift coefficient requirements at the ailerons, and similarity with other sailplanes. I started to...

Wing Structure as a Beam (part 3). I was getting ahead of my posts here, and as sometimes happens I got “wrapped around the axle”. Since writing about it seems to help me re-focus, I thought I’d catch you up. Wing beam FEM : So I was attempting to predict wing bending and torsion of my...

I think it's approximated like this: HP Loss = (elevation x 0.03 x horsepower @ sea level)/1000 I don't think being a 2 stroke or four stroke will make a difference.

That's exactly where my thoughts are too! A very light soaring machine with lower power and smaller battery requirements. It may not be a practical cross country machine, but as it turns out, I don't have that many places I need to go. I would use it for fun flying, and challenging myself...

me too. and remember that the part 103 "use our simple math method" is based on a 170 lb pilot and no weight for a BRS. rather than MTOW.

I didn't see span or aspect ratio in the data, but at a glance those look similar, however the NV-5 has un-fared tricycle gear, rear control surface struts, a little draggier fuselage shape, and no folding prop. Those things add up fast!

I see you managed to be in front for all the shots. That's good piloting! Beautiful aircraft (except for the external antennae)

Flap Finite Element Analysis. ( a wing bending interlude!) So I left off the last post with the question: “How bad is the stress in the flaps and ailerons from wing deflection and should it drive the wing bending limits?” For me, the easiest approach to answer that question is to build a...