Description
The essence of free-flight is that the aircraft have no need for external control, for instance by radio. Aircraft of this type have been flown for over two centuries. They are designed to be inherently stable in flight; if disturbed by a gust of wind or a thermal current they will return automatically to stable flight. For this reason most free flight aircraft are not replicas of man-carrying ones, for they are designed for a quite different purpose. Their stability is achieved by a combination of design and trim, - the relationship between centre of gravity, wing and tailplane incidence and rudder setting.
With their much lower wing loading, free-flight aircraft fly much slower than the engine-powered radio-controlled aircraft that many people first think of when ‘model aircraft’ is mentioned. Most of them glide at little more than walking pace and few weigh more than 500 grams.
Usually the sole object in free-flight is flight duration, and one of the sport’s fascinations and challenges is to design the most efficient aircraft within the various competition limits on such parameters as minimum weight, maximum wing area and motive power. It is solely a stopwatch, rather than any judge’s opinion, that decides the result.
Read more about this topic: Free Flight (model Aircraft)
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (16321704)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a global village instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacles present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)