Radio Control Cross Country Soaring News

2009 Thermal Safari

On April 18/19, the Sacramento Valley Soaring Society held its Thermal Safari cross-country soaring event. The lift on Saturday in particular was good, and all teams completed the 30-mile course without relaunching. Steve Henke's report posted on the SVSS website links to some youtube video clips.

ALOFT Unofficially beats FAI Goal-and-Return World Record!

On October 5th, 2008, the ALOFT autonomous soaring glider completed a goal-and-return flight of 30.2mi (60.4mi round trip), which is farther than the world-record of 24.3mi set in 2005 by Gary Fogel. Also, we achieved a personal best-duration record of 4.5hr air-time, 98% of which was controlled by autopilot.
During the flight, ALOFT traveled 114.14km (70.9mi) miles, simultaneously qualifying the team for a 100km distance pin from xcsoaring.com.

World Record in Cross Country Soaring

Twenty years ago, Joe Wurts set the cross-country RC-soaring record, which still stands today. He wrote a report about it way back then, it is still relevant today, and we are happy to post it in the hopes of inspiring others to make their own record attempts.

Testing RNR’s SBXC Performance

Dan Edwards has updated his testing paper Performance Testing of RNR’s SBXC Using a Piccolo Autopilot on March 2008. The paper discusses actual flight performance of the popular SBXC cross-country glider.
Dan is a graduate student at North Carolina State University and has a website about his autonomous soaring research.

SBXC Assembly Manual

The venerable SBXC and Super-XC are popular gliders for cross-country soaring.

This downloadable PDF document describes the step-by-step assembly with many photos and detailed descriptions.

Minimizing Slop in Control Surfaces

The popular cross-country gliders SBXC and MXC are molded performance planes. Slop is a problem, especially in high-performance gliders.
At best, slop makes flying more difficult; and at worst, it can lead to flutter which in turn may cause air frame failure.

SBXC and MXC Sailplanes

The SBXC and MXC are commercially available all-molded gliders designed specifically for cross-country competition. Their design yields high performance while also providing the stability needed to pilot them from a moving car.

Testing RNR’s SBXC Performance

John Ellias and Dan Edwards have tested actual flight performance of the popular SBXC cross-country glider. John used an on-board GPS unit to arrive at a sink polar for the glider. Dan expanded on John's data using an auto pilot.

Organize a Contest

How to design and run a cross-country soaring event. Course, tasks, base and rules are aspects to consider.