Radio Control Cross Country Soaring News

2009 Fall California Valley Cross Country

The Fall 2009 “Cal Valley” Cross Country event was held Halloween weekend this year. It was later in the year than it has typically been and the weather was very pleasant. John Ellias reports interesting late-year flying on a greatly expanded course.

2010 Cross Country in Germany

On May 2nd, 2010, the German RC club MSV Giengen holds its annual cross-country soaring contest. Marcela and Dieter expect to be in Germany at this time, and are planning to attend this event. Like in the US, any glider with a maximum weight of 5 kg (11 lbs) may compete. The planes are winch-launched.

That’s where the similarities end. Pilots negotiate the 6.5 km (4 mile) course on foot and collect 10 points for every turn point they round. The Giengen course has 6 turn points which may be as little as 300 meters (1000 feet) apart. This is a distance task, and pilots may fly the course as often as they want without having to land.

There also is team scoring. Teams are made up of two or three pilots (we don’t know about helpers, yet). Additional points will be added to pilots’ individual scores if they fulfill certain requirements. For example, a team has only 10 minutes to launch and get on course. To gain additional points on course, all team members have to round any particular turn point within 30 seconds of one another.

It promises to be an interesting event. For more information, please feel free to contact Marcela and Dieter at .

Roll Your Own

Greg Norsworthy has detailed construction of a competitive cross-country racing glider in his RCGroups thread. Greg has considerable experience in building and flying cross-country gliders. In this thread, he describes building his eighth plane.

The glider’s most immediate and striking feature is its simplicity: it is a polyhedral design controlled by rudder and elevator only! No ailerons, no flaps, no spoilers. The model is the result of a thorough thought process about just what is needed to compete successfully in a cross-country contest. Do not be fooled by this simplicity: one of Greg’s gliders holds the current course speed record in Montague!

Greg’s write-up is a great resource for all who want to build their own cross-country glider. But even those who prefer to buy an ARF will benefit from studying this thread. Greg meticulously exposes and explains not just building and design details, but also how to set-up a glider to assure it flies hands-off. This is very important at altitude, when all the pilot sees from the ground is a speck.

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.