G-1 UAV Mk.1 first flight
- Andrea Gatti
- 9 gen 2019
- Tempo di lettura: 2 min
Aggiornamento: 2 giu 2020
After only a month from its preliminary design, the G-1 makes its first flight on Tuesday morning, September 26th, with perfect weather conditions.
Apart from minor defects promptly fixed while at the test airfield, the aircraft showed docile behavior without particular criticalities. Take-off it's simple: it is sufficient to bring the engine to maximum power, run as fast as you can and leave the aircraft flying.
Controls were readily responsive except for the roll that needed some adjustments by increasing the aileron travel to almost maximum, and even if the engine power was a little bit underestimated the motor was able to ensure decent rates of climb at full power.
However the endurance was very poor during the first tests (roughly 15 minutes). The cause is to be found in the excessive static margin (distance between the center of gravity and the aerodynamic center of the aircraft) which requires an important down-lifting contribution from the stabilizer to obtain steady-level flight.
By working on the position of the center of gravity of the aircraft moving the on-board batteries, it was possible to reduce the static margin and thus slightly increase the flight endurance up to about 20 minutes, but the result were far from satisfactory. The true limit of the G-1 is hidden in the poor aerodynamics of the wings.
Wing sections in fact are made of an airfoil-shaped core of polystyrene reinforced by two 100 mm wide, 0.5 mm thick balsa sheets directly glued on the superior and the inferior faces of the polystyrene core.
The little steps of 0.5 mm along the whole span of the wing, very close to the leading edge, I think are the main responsible for the performance deterioration of the entire aircraft. For this reason I'm already proceeding with the construction of a new set of wings covered with fiberglass so as to obtain a rigid, yet smooth, structure without penalizing the weight of the entire aircraft.
