Gossamer Spirit

2004.06.01

Cebola is a splendid builder and designer, and a great friend this hobby brought to me. I had the honor to help him in his move into electric powered models some months ago and now he's hooked to it.

After seeing how much can be done with the current technology and thinking in a marginally underpowered way instead of the usual overly overpowered models we so often see, he decided to go big but with a small motor.

His dream was about one of these marvelous man-powered planes, which was a perfect fit to this marginally underpowered way of thinking/designing

The airframe is made with balsa, a fishing rod carbon boom, wing has a carbon+balsa spar. All covered with cristal clear covering: Monokote clear on the wings and Oralight on the fuse

Wingspan: 3m (117in)
Length: 1m (40in)
Wing airfoil: Mark Drela's AG series
AUW: 650g (22oz)

Thrust cames from a QRP Hyper 400 6V motor, with a MPJet 3.8:1 gearbox and a GWS 12*6 prop Powering this setup is a 60g E-Tec 1200mAh 2S1P LiPo battery.

Leonardo (aka Cebolinha), Cebola's son, with the unassembled Gossamer Spirit on the day of it's maiden flight

Some more pics of the assembled plane

Cebola with his model

Maiden flight was on Pirapora do Bom Jesus, a great slope site but on a day with almost no wind
(photos by Sergio Handa)

Big smile after a great maiden flight !

Links to some web forum threads going on about this plane: RCGroups, E-Voo and E-Voo again.