M3 is a plane up put together in one day for an aerodynamics class I was teaching to high school students. I wanted to give them some hands experience, so in addition to having them build WhiteWings gliders, I put M3 together to let them all fly an RC plane. We flew M3 in the school's gymnasium, there were no thermals, so the flights were pretty short, but we launched M3 of the top of the bleachers so they got a 10-15 second flight each time, not much, but enough to give them some feel for how the controls work.
| Plane characteristics | Radio | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wing span: 31in (79cm) | Component | Type | Wt (g) | |
| Wing cord: 7.6cm (3in)(root) | Rx | SkyHooks&Rigging 4 ch | 2.7 | |
| Wing loading: 11.1g/sq.dm (3.6oz/sq.ft) | Servos | 2 @ WES LS-24 | 2x2.9 | |
| Fuse length: 40.5cm (16in) | Battery Pack | 4-cell 50mAh NiCd | 14.8 | |
| Control: 2 channels (rudder, elevator) | Total wt | 23.3 | ||
| Materials: balsa, carbon | ||||
| Ready to fly weight: 63g (2.2oz) | ||||
M3 micro glider.
(There are more images of M3 in the Photo Gallery.)
Construction details:
M3's wing and tail are constructed very similar to M1 and M2, balsa
sheeting and the wing is ribbed. The fuselage is a carbon rod, and besides
the radio gear that is about all there is to it. As I mentioned above, I
made this plane so high school kids could fly. I figured it would take a
bit of a beating, so I made the tail out of 3/32" balsa sheeting. It is
overly built and also help cause the plane to be quite tail heavy. The
plane with gear actually ended up being about 48g, and I had to add about
15g to the nose of the plane to get the center of gravity right. Most of
time if a plane I am building needs in weight increase of over 33% to get
the center of gravity in the right spot I start over or rebuild something
but, I was in a bit of a time crunch (I needed the plane for the next days
class) so I left it as is and added the extra weight. The glide
characteristics would be much better if I rebuilt the plane better balanced
without the extra weight.
Flight characteristics:
The plane flies pretty well and can take a pretty good beating. I helped
about ten high schools kids learn to fly it in a school gymnasium and it
bounced off the walls more than once and took quite a few "hard" landings
and kept on ticking with only a minor repair or two.
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