{"id":3239,"date":"2018-05-30T09:56:56","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T13:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/blog\/?p=3239"},"modified":"2018-05-30T09:56:56","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T13:56:56","slug":"surprised-by-out-of-the-box-thinking-in-embryo-with-plan-download","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/surprised-by-out-of-the-box-thinking-in-embryo-with-plan-download\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprised by Out-of-the-Box Thinking in Embryo – with plan download!"},"content":{"rendered":"

For many years, I have had an Embryo “design” floating around in my head.\u00a0 Basically, I wanted to create a pod-and-boom-type of model.\u00a0 I remember years ago drawing up (as in pencil and paper!) something I called “the Green Monster”, somehow associated with baseball and Fenway Park.\u00a0 These designs are, by nature, pretty ugly aircraft, and I had no thoughts they would be at all competitive.<\/p>\n

When I came back to the hobby, I got the opportunity to fly indoors at a great site, the Ultimate Arenas in Pontiac, Michigan.\u00a0 Imagine a full-size soccer field covered by a 40-70 foot ceiling.\u00a0 At first, I would go once a year, but then a few years ago, things changed – the Cloudbusters made that their monthly indoor site and I retired.\u00a0 I was able to go once a month (I could go once a week, but 2 hours each way for 2 hours of flying makes me say “no thanks”.)<\/p>\n

There is a bit of a rivalry here in the Cleveland\/Detroit area.\u00a0 Maybe it is one-sided, maybe it is not.\u00a0 Us Detroit “outdoor” FAC flyers that fly indoors in the winter are dominated by the Cleveland Indoor flyers when they come up to Pontiac for the yearly Indoor Fling.\u00a0 Don and Chuck Slusarczyk, and Larry Loucka thoroughly beat us in FAC events such as Phantom Flash, NoCal, Peanut, and Embryo.\u00a0 Winn More and I have made it a personal goal to raise our level of performance to somewhat match theirs.\u00a0 The most obvious place this happens is in the categories of Phantom Flash and Embryo, where FAC Rules specify 2 minute maxes as official flights.\u00a0 If more than one person get triple-maxes, this forces a fly-off, generally we choose the mass launch, all-up\/last-down tie-breaker fly-off.\u00a0 But in order to get there, we need to build models that are capable of triple maxes.<\/p>\n

In preparation for the 2017 Indoor Fling, I decided to build an Embryo.\u00a0 I used a mash-up of ideas that I had gathered during my bar-raising experiences.\u00a0 I had jumped into flying the local event – Blatter 40 – a simple stick ROG with 40 square inches of wing area (I was the Cloudbusters 2017 Champion, averaging about 2:30 a flight) and had successfully built a NoCal that took my Indoor NoCal times from 2:30 on up and over 5 minutes.\u00a0 Using these, I decided to revisit my goofy pod-and-boom Embryo design – but just for fun.<\/p>\n

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the Sky-Box completed in 2017 before any successful flying<\/p><\/div>\n

I used the Blatter 40 wing (with its 6% Simplex airfoil) and increased the chord to achieve the Embryo maximum wing area of 50 square inches.\u00a0 I also used the Blatter 40’s simple tail surfaces.\u00a0 For the power, I used a 1\/4″ square stick of light balsa, an aluminum prop hanger, and a 7″ diameter can-formed prop – all from my NoCal experiences.\u00a0 The fuselage of the model was the 1.25″x1.5″x3″ Embryo volume, stood on end, with triangles tapering the “leading edge” and “trailing edge” of the box.\u00a0 The un-enclosed motor passes through the top of the fuselage.\u00a0 A simple speader bar was used for the wheel supports and some of my GeeBee Model Z-inspired Embryo wheelpants were employed.<\/p>\n

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it’s a little chunky for Indoor flying!<\/p><\/div>\n

I had it ready for the Indoor Fling in 2017.\u00a0 My plan was to power it with a loop of 3\/32″ rubber.\u00a0 During the event, I could get no more than about 1\/2″ circle of flight – and that was from a hand launch.\u00a0 The silly model was a failure (not a surprise).<\/p>\n

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a test flight in the spring of 2017<\/p><\/div>\n

The 2018 Indoor Fling came and went and the Sky-Box stayed at home; not yet relegated to the “failed-plane” pile, but never being brought to any flying event.\u00a0 As I prepared for the 2018 AMA Indoor Nats, on a whim, I packed it to take with me.\u00a0 The contest schedule promised a lot of down-time, as FAC events were flown in the morning and us FACers would have all afternoon and evening to test, chit-chat, and watch the endurance flyers.\u00a0 So the weird little model came with me.<\/p>\n

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ready for testing at Rantoul in May 2018<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the first things that I did was up the power.\u00a0 I installed a loop of 0.110″ rubber (“scrap” from making 0.085″ motors for my NoCal).\u00a0 I found several things with this motor: a) it flew very well from hand-launch with this power, b) it “might” ROG, if torqued way up, and c) ROGs were not easy, as the torque wanted to lay the model on its left side.\u00a0 But I was able to log a 1:29 test flight from ROG!\u00a0 I never expected the model to hit 1 minute, let alone 1.5 minutes!\u00a0 If I could manage the ROG, I could put in some respectable times in Embryo!<\/p>\n