Electric Super 60

I am considering converting an old Super 60 to electric power. Can anyone give me their thoughts on what motor/speedo/battery would be required to fly the model in a mannor befiting its age As the model requires recovering I am going to decrease the dihedral and fit ailerons. What should I reduce the dihedral to

Keep well

Regards

DaveS

Shame on you, shame!!!!! Junior 60's are only to be powered by diesel engines WITH THAT WONDERFUL AROMA!!!!!!!!!!!
Put one of those new fangled sparky thingamy whotsits in it and you will go straight to hell and burn in the fires of amyl nitrate for all eternity.

whats the aprox all up weight Dave?

as for Dihidral if your taking it out take it all out!

M

I wouldn't consider taking all the dihedral out this will make it very unstable, perhaps reduce it to about 2" under one wing, they must of had about 6" to allow them to remain relatively stable using rudder as primary control.

If I'm wrong, I'm sure Dr Andy with put us all right, he's pretty good at getting us to sleep at night.

Dr. Andy in the house! Actually, I don't have a PhD, so perhaps that should be preceded with "self proclaimed" Dr. Andy? Hmmm.

There are two reasons for dihedral on an aircraft. The first is to introduce an amount of static stability in the roll axis. More dihedral = more static stability. This is pretty easy to understand, and see in action. The models with lots of dihedral tend to be nice and easy to fly, self correcting in the roll axis. Models with less dihedral tend to be more demanding to fly, and need more pilot input to keep steady in the roll axis.

The second reason for dihedral, is to impart a degree of yaw/roll coupling onto an airframe, as Rich pointed out. With a rudder only aircraft, this coupling is desireable to ensure turns are nice and smooth. It is caused by the basic geometry of the wing, and the direction of airflow over it. As the aircraft yaws, the effective angle of attack of each side of the wing changes because of the dihedral, and this alters the lift distribution across the wing, thus causing the rolling. The more diehdral you have, generally the more yaw/roll coupling you get.

The above statements are fairly generalised, and they will be affected by other factors, such as thrustlines, fin areas, swept areas, fuselage design, wing aerofoils, etc etc etc. The thing to bear in mind is that when you add ailerons to the wing, you don't need as much static stability in the roll axis, or as much yaw/roll coupling. This is because you have the ailerons to control the roll manually, and you can correct unwanted roll easily with them.

The amount you need is purely down to personal preference. If you want the aircraft to be a nice aerobat with minimal coupling between yaw and roll, then see how it performs with no dihedral. If you want something that is still easy to fly (and quite stable in roll still), try as Rich says, and use 2" under one wing. This will still give enough stability, yet not be unmanagable

There are a few articles on the net about dihedral. Wikipedia gives a nice breif summary.

As for what motor/ESC/battery, then a bit more info would help us here. What motor do you have in it at the moment? what prop is it turning? Any idea on the all up weight? What sort of performance do you want? Nice and sedate? enough for some aerobatics? Or "adequate" power

Lesson over, wakey wakey at the back there.....



Cheers
Andy