Therminator

Development history

Therminator uses a flap mechanism that I first saw on Thomas Koster's F1Cs in 1998: presumably there's a connection. Some say it goes back even further to one of Mike Evatt's Wakefields. The wing, which has the flap hinge close to 50% chord, is located by pins near the LE and TE that are fixed to the fuselage. The flaps are moved by raising and lowering the middle of the wing to increase or decrease its camber. This flap system probably minimises the load on the servo and also gives the designer control over the way that the wing incidence varies relative to the fuselage when the flaps move. The chordwise position of these pins allows him to choose whether the relative incidence increases, remains constant or decreases as the flaps move to increase the wing camber.

Here's the development history from Gerhard Aringer himself:

Hi Martin,

Here comes a short story plus a drawing.

The development of this model starts about 3 years ago. Some drawings for the profiles maid by Stefan Rumpp with some advices from my experience in F1C.

After the Group (Nyhegn, Rumpp, Aringer) shrinks to a smaller size (Nyhegn, Aringer) the development went on faster. That was about 2 years ago.

Redesign of the airfoil (F1C and F1A)
First mechanical Ideas for the fuselage maid by me and finished (redesigned and produced) by Henning and Jes
First fuselage shown and discussed in Norway 2004
Complete Model finished in January 2005
First crash, produced by me in January 2005, repaired
The complete trimming procedure and elimination off stupid mistakes (build in by me) was done by Jes and Henning in USA 2005 (more than 80 flights)
Crash again in an DT-situation after 4 Minutes (of course in front off the contest)
Repair done by me and then I gave the model back to Jes for Norway (trimmed again)
After receiving the model from Norway Jörg Schellhase makes some starts and changed the set up a little bit (I have had an injured leg and couldnt run)
In Argentina I start to fly the model in 4 m / s wind up to 7 m/s
With Peter de Boers influence a turbolater was glued on the stab (better gliding)
In the world cup the model was flown in the first 4 rounds (It also likes turbulent thermals)
In the world champs I used it in the first 2 rounds and in both fly offs
The 5 min. round was from my point off view perfect (up to 12 kg on the line, good acceleration and perfect climb followed by a perfect glide in good air)
The Model came back with a broken tailboom (10 cm behind the fuselage ???!!!!!)
After repairing it I used it without a testflight
Good start, but it was stalling a little bit (232 sec.)

I think it was good teamwork! Its a little bit a pity that not every body who starts in the project was able to continue working in a team.

Mit freundlichen Gr

Kind regards

Gerhard Aringer

Drawings and photos

Here is Gerd's PDF drawing of the Therminator F1A and below are some photos from Argentina. The flight-line photo and the F1C were taken by Chris Murphy, the rest by Martin Dilly. All photos are clickable to see the, much larger, original:


Waiting for a flight. Notice the center of the wing: the flaps are up because the center of the wing chord is lowered. Looking at the tip shows the flap position. The horizon and boom are not bent and you're sober: its just the Murphy camera in action.	Front end with flaps down.

Being held, flaps down.	Wingtip, showing flaps lowered.

General underside view.	For comparison, here is Gerd's F1C.

The business end.
The front servo drives the stab. The one behind it controls the flaps and the third, almost hidden behind the rear of the hatch, controls the rudder. The Multiclass timer, which is mounted between the front and middle servos, controls all three servos. The tow hook was developed by the Rumpp / Nyhegn / Aringer combine for use with an electronic timer. It has only one adjustment, the unlatch tension, and no mechanical control links because rudder movements are mediated by the timer. This model does not use a wing wiggler.