Here’s a picture of my Aegea. The wings are supposedly from Phil Barnes (I bought the plane used) and are the heavy duty F3J layup. They had better be since they weigh 45.3 oz. with servos and joiners. Built to plan, the tips have 5 degrees of dihedral and the center section is flat.
I have added the wing to my own pod and boom fuselage with a tailboom.com heavy Bubble Dancer carbon boom. Though a little soft for my preference, the boom will be adequate since this is a low speed model. The tail has my version of the V-mount full flying stab, tail surfaces are bagged FG on pink 250 foam and uniweb carbon spars with weblets. The rudder has a Kevlar hinge.
Pushrods are 0.050” CF in 16 ga. Teflon tubes. The wing is bolted on with two 10-32 bolts.
Design wise, I have gone to a long tail moment with minimal tail area coefficients. Once you get used to the lower control power, the low speed handling can be smoothed out a lot with some practice.
All up flying weight is under 66 oz., if you don’t think a 19.4 oz RTF fuselage is light, go and weigh your own 130” open class fuse. I can save another ounce by using an Electron Rx instead of the Airtronics PCM Rx.
After a few hand tosses, I flew it on the winch in light winds. In comparison to my own TD designs, the plane is quick for the all up weight and wing loading. Landings are slow, but if 10 ounces could be taken out, it would hang on the wing like my Supergees.
I’m sure that the Aegea 130 would probably be a more popular plane if it were not an exercise in gathering parts from a multitude of suppliers or scratch building everything but the wing. A lighter bagged wing with a proper carbon spar should come out at least 6 ounces less and this may be an advantage since the airfoil is designed for these low Reynolds numbers. After this flying season. I’ll decide if the weight reduction is worth the effort to build a new plane.
June 2004
Well I had a chance to get some extensive thermal flying on the Aegea today, the lift was weak in the morning and built to boomers later in the afternoon. Launch trim is strange, I have the towhook right on the CG and should be ¼” behind that to get rotation. With some compensation of up elevator trim on launch the plane still gets a decent launch though not as strong as my MH32 designs.
What is more impressive is the cruise mode with recommended amount of reflex. No other plane I have built has as much pitch response to reflex. Once 8% down trim was programmed in, the speed range of the plane increased to the point where everyone was impressed. As the wind picked up to about 15 mph in the afternoon, no ballast was needed as the plane still came upwind at a good clip. As a TD style plane you can now see the advantage of 8 ounces out of the plane since the top end would be more than adequate at 56 ounces, while the thermalling capability would increase. This is very nice ranging plane that can thermal with the best of them, there’s no observable performance difference today while flying against the Icon, Pike Superior, Artemis, Eraser F3B and Extreme that showed up. But then again, they do say it’s the pilot not the plane
Next is the landing mode setup, getting a flap/crow/elevator setup to work, though the one landing measured today was a 97.
Sept. 2004
I flew this plane for most of the year, including the only man-on-man contest. After the trimming and familiarization process, it has become a friendly plane to fly. Full crow as set up with maximum droop indicated in the recommended setup will bring the plane in vertically at a reasonable speed, with a pullout 20 feet in front of the spot. I have fun entering thermals that other planes have marked and outclimbing them. Making TD task times has required a change in strategy. Bailing out of the downwind thermal can be earlier than heavier planes since the L/D is good for a plane with a low sink rate. I wrote a little description of the strategy in the Wind Flying article. The great penetration with full reflex can be used in emergencies to run upwind if massive sink is all you can find.
Here is my interpretation of the Aegea Supra.
Return to RC Soaring