Well, readers our sailplane class did another test with the HPA (Human Powered Aircraft) last Friday. The class woke up nice and early to be able to leave State College by 6:00 AM so that people who had 9 AM classes could make it back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the flight test (thanks 8 AM Chem class, as if I needed another reason to hate you), but I did hear lots about it. You see, this was a special flight test for our HPA. This was the first time that anyone in our class had actually gotten to see it fly. As I’ve stated in previous posts, the Sailplane class has been working on this project since 2006, and while they did have a few successful flights back then, no one in the current class was in the college yet. However, let it be known that on October 10th, 2014, our HPA flew for about a minute and a half. Quite an accomplishment right? However, the operative word in that sentence is flew, not flies
. See where this is going? Yup, we crashed the HPA. And not just a few broken balsa stringers, we crashed the crap out of it. Let me give you the gist of the flight test. The takeoff went pretty smoothly, and everyone cheered as the HPA lifted off into the air. Following that, the plane slowly rose to 300 ft, as our pilot manned the controls from the ground. It’s actually quite a sight to see the person with the controls following behind the aircraft in a car with the sunroof open. Anyways, after reaching 300 ft, the pilot began to attempt some turns. The first turn went off without a hitch, nice and smooth without any indication of what would happen less than a minute later. After successfully completing the turn, the HPA flew off into the sunrise a bit before the pilot attempted another turn. This again, worked out fairly well, but if one is paying close attention to the video, they can see a little downward movement in the left wing. Essentially what happened, or what is believed to have happened, is something failed in the left wing. However, even after that, it continued to fly for a bit longer. On the other hand, once the pilot attempted to descend, disaster struck. Essentially, in an aircraft, when you begin to descend, airspeed increases. With increased airspeed comes an increased load that the aircraft must withstand. It seems that once the HPA began to descend, and thus have an increased speed, the entire wing fails and looses its dihedral (slight angle of the wing, shown in the picture below). 
As soon as that happens, the right wing drops significantly, hits the ground, and the whole HPA sort of self-distructs on top of itself. It certainly was a sight to see, but the HPA is definitely in bad shape, if you can even call it a plane anymore. On a better note, we now get to construct a new HPA, which will certainly be more fun than flying another person’s design and work. Overall, the flight test was certainly informative, and if you have the time I highly suggest watching the video, shown below:
A Look into Aerospace Engineering at the Undergraduate Level
