Reactive canard that works

**Rumdog** · 11-14-2010, 04:45 PM

I see it fluttering around like crazy in reaction to lift, but is it actually helping to keep the boat on the water? Probably not.

**h1rc** · 11-14-2010, 05:10 PM

Funny you say that yes if you actually watch the video in the straight away it settles in an actually controls the boat ride in the corner it is very over reactive and that is where we are still trying to work with it last weekend we ran this same setup in a 15 to 18mph wind and the boat never once even attempted to lift. So yes it is very sensitive and is still in need of adjustment as stated but as far as working I have full confidence in this setup. It will not stop some blow overs but that's a given we are trying to achieve the ride of the real boats where they are floating (the less boat in the water the faster you go) as you see in the video there is very little boat in the water even through the turns If you think it doesn't work try moving your cg six inches from the back of the sponsons and see how it works out.

Rob Brackett
Scales Unlimited Race Team

**FloatDaBoat** · 11-14-2010, 09:55 PM

From the onboard video, it appears to run pretty stable to me.

**Coug90** · 11-18-2010, 02:00 AM

Nice boat and wing. I was wondering if you set the baseline for the position of the wing in order to what effect it has on the boat. It would be difficult to tell if the canard is doing what you intended it to do unless you know what the boat would do without it or when it was set in a neutral position. You may have to run it in a set position to find the point where it is on the border of blowing over at the end of the shoot or into a stiff breeze first, wouldn't you? Without doing that, you'll never know whether the boat ever needed a canard wing to keep it on the water. In order to find proof, you need to have that so called control group, right? I think it's a great experiment you've got going. Good luck with it.

Mitch

**Ub Hauled** · 11-18-2010, 03:53 AM

I have been thinking about how to implement this in my boats, I found out thru my "studies" that controlling the overreaction will affect the functionality of it (too slow of a response will lead to blow over), rendering the self adjusting canard useless.
One way to have a proper study done is if you purposely had the boat setup very flighty on a glassy pond w/ the gyro disabled at zero degree angle and see how quick she takes off (please be careful, don't want you to lose her)... then enable the gyro with the same setup and conditions and see if it's effective or how effective the canard is.
like Coug90 said, it needs to have a "base value" in order to be evaluated.

**h1rc** · 11-18-2010, 06:01 AM

Another approach

You have brought up one way to evaluate the functionality of the reactive canard/gyro. The way we chose is to use a software package that allows us to zoom in and go frame by frame. Our gamble on the first run was how fast would the canard react. With modern electronics the reaction time is in milliseconds, much faster than a human would ever be able to react. The one thing we can't do that the drivers of the real boats are doing is to anticipate where they are going to get hit with winds gust or rough water due some condition on the course. After reviewing the video of several of the runs we have made we feel pretty confident that the canard is working and well worth the time and effort. We are still fine tuning the gyro sensitivity to try and get the canard to not over react. With this boat being designed and built to be a plug that we can make molds and build our production boats from our main problem is we are running out of time(the weather man is forecasting the possibliity of snow this weekend) so will wind up finishing our testing next spring with the boats we will race next season.

Bob Brackett
Scales Unlimited Racing Team
"The only limits are, as always, those of vision"
---James Broughton

**AndyKunz** · 11-18-2010, 11:08 AM

Bob Brackett, haven't seen that name in YEARS! Glad to hear you're still around. Still in Tri-Cities? You had the fastest ET Bud I'd ever seen!

Andy

**h1rc** · 11-18-2010, 11:01 PM

Hi Andy,

Somethings you just can't get out of your system. When Rob came to me last fall and said he wanted to go scale racing it took me about a half a second to get onboard.

**Steven Vaccaro** · 11-19-2010, 08:47 AM

Nice. Any pictures of the setup and how its installed?

**h1rc** · 11-19-2010, 05:23 PM

Reactive canard - the works

Steven,

I am working up a build report on the whole boat that I will post shortly. But in the meantime I will give you a preview of the canard part of this project. This boat is designed to be a "floater" in other words the less boat in the water the faster it will go. With the idea that we needed to be able to control the attitude of the boat by other means than adding a bunch of weight to the front of the boat. We did alot of research and expermentation to get a gyro and servo that would work in a boat. With the current CG about 6 inches aft of the sponson transom we decided it would not be a wise idea to run it without the canard active, we are not out to set any altitude records. Hopefully the attached pictures will give you some idea of how we did it. So far the results are quite rewarding.

Bob Brackett
Scales Unlimited Racing Team
---"The only limits are, as always, those of vision"
---James Broughton

Attached Files

**m4a1usr** · 11-19-2010, 05:49 PM

Looks interesting. Sounds like you decided to go with a shorter leverage arm with the 6 inches behind COB. Probably to decrease the reaction time of the aerodynamic rate of change vs gyro sensitivity, you might have hit it on the head. This ones a watcher.

John

**Fluid** · 11-19-2010, 07:02 PM

I don't think he had much choice on the 'shorter leverage arm' John - there just isn't room up front in the model for a longer one.

I am impressed so far with the results on this boat. It does blow over with the reactive canard, but then the full-scale boats do too. The large size and relatively slow speed of the boat help the reactive system function, and we'd have to compare the performance of the boat with one running a fixed canard angle to see the benefit - a flapping canard doesn't mean it helps anything. Too, we have yet to see it work in real race water or wind.

But I don't mean to sound like this is not a good leap forward - it very well may be! Regardless - keep up the good work.

.

**h1rc** · 11-19-2010, 08:47 PM

A few other points to ponder - The break in the bottom of the air trap is basically scale - the ram wing leading edges can be changed out and replaced with different sets to gain lift or down force. The motor and batteries can swap location moving the CG forward. The run with the blow over we were running the 2 5S1p's with the X450/3 prop we were radared at a speeds of 60+ mph. When we dropped from the 2 5S1Ps to the 2 4S1Ps we went from an X450/3 to and X455/3 and the boat became very stable. I wish we had video of the day we ran with a 15 to 18 mph head wind, it never lifted. We have an agreement with RCU that our speed can not exceed the speed of the nitro boats and with the 2 4S1P's we are at the top of the allowable speed zone.

Bob Brackett
Scales Unlimited Racing Team
---"The only limits are, as always, those of vision"
---James Broughton

**m4a1usr** · 11-19-2010, 09:05 PM

Any change in hardware adjustments between the 5S and 4S runs Bob? Or just the larger prop?

John

Reactive canard that works

Reactive canard that works

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