Speed verses load

[Bennie Vorster]

Com on all, please help me out here.

What are the influents of a heavier load to your airspeed and on your ground speed?

[Morph]

Load has no affect on the difference between airspeed and groundspeed. This is purely the sum, or difference between strength of the wind versus the direction of flight.

What increased load does do is increase fuel consumption, lengthen take-off and landing distances, push your stall speeds up, make the plane slower to respond in turns etc. I fly 3-axis, and find solo I can happily trim the plane to 60MPH (normal cruise 75MPH), hands off and putter along, the moment I add a PAX I have to fly at a minimum of 65MPH, and then this is at the extreme upper end of the trim, Ideally, for comfortable flight dual, I trim to 70-75Mph.

The advantage of increased load is a greater wing-loading, i.e. weight being carried by the wing, which in turn increases stability in turbulance.

[justin.schoeman]

Heavier load will also decrease max cruise speed due to induced drag...

-justin

[Bennie Vorster]

Ok, so how do I get to fly faster with my existing tryk.

On the moment I'm cruising about 48 mph, stalling at 38 mph and when I go downhill for a landing, I'm pushing it to +/- 53 mph.

Is this the most you can get from a Windlass with a 14 wing without endangering anyone.

[justin.schoeman]

Ok, so how do I get to fly faster with my existing tryk.

1) Dive

2) More power (gotta overcome that drag...)

3) Faster wing? (Only fly 3-axis, so don't know how these trike thingies work )

-justin

[Morph]

You can get better speed by moving the hanging point of the wing forward. Some trikes have adjustable wings, i.e. multiple hanging points. However the moment you do this your glide ratio's, stall speeds, approach speeds etc are affected. Typically for any increase in speed, means your stall speeds, approach speeds and takeoff speeds go up. Your glide ratio becomes worse, i.e. your plane will drop quicker on idle than before.

MAJOR important: I would ask an AP to look at this, and not try this on your own

Otherwise smaller wings give you better speed, again at a cost of gliding ratio's etc.

Another way to increase speed is to reduce drag, maybe with fairing, wheel spats etc.

Otherwise buy a new plane

[RV4ker (RIP)]

Stupid Q?
Why you wanna go faster? (May help answer what required action is?)

If to go places, then Windlass not ideal, if you want to go slightly fatser in current aerie refer to morph's post and maybe add a faring, some spats and do some streamlining on the bits dangeling in the wind, but by their nature trikes are slow (sorry).

PS
Have a look at the new Quik and pegasis trike to shee what they have done to get 100mph from 912...