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Airborne Components

Free Flight

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The essence of free-flight is that the aircraft have no need for any form of external control, for instance by radio. Free-flight is the oldest kind of model aeroplane, aircraft of this type have been flown for over two centuries. They are designed to be inherently stable in flight if disturbed by a gust of wind or a thermal up-current they will return automatically to stable flight. Their stability is achieved by a combination of design and trim - the relationship between centre of gravity, wing and tailplane incidence and rudder setting.

In this age of readily available and cheap radio control systems, why would anyone want to build and fly model aircraft that, once launched, are at the mercy of the elements? There are as many answers to this question as there are free-flight modellers, but these are two commmon themes:

• The trimming of a free-flight model to fly in a desired flight pattern is a challenge not faced by builders of radio controlled models, but extremely satisfying once you have achieved this. Some modellers consider free-flight to be the purest form of aeromodelling.
• Indoor free-flight is a further challenge, as the walls of sports halls tend to be unforgiving. The great advantage of such flying is, however, that the weather cannot spoil it!

Our initial free-flight offering is based on plans and components from Flight Line PlansTM and balsa kits from Aerographics. Our aim is to steadily increase the range of free-flight products. We welcome all suggestions for additions, please send us an email.

The following links will take you to pages which describe the plans, kits and airborne compoents for electric free-flight:

• plans from Flight Line PlansTM
• balsa kits from Aerographics
• free-flight components: motor timers and flight profilers; pre-wired motors, props and LiPo cells