hobby-horsing

Your cell phone has more computing power than Armstrong and Aldrin had aboard when they went to the moon. They were controlling 3 axis of gyration.

 

. . . and the computer locked up several times, eventually failing during decent, so they went to manual controls.

 

always a good idea to have the ultimate option, drive it yourself.

 

It's a few years since I had a RC plane, but I believe you can now buy a plug in auto pilot that will stabilise your model and prevent it crashing, for less than £100.
You could afford to have second one, to give redundancy.
The sensitivity can be adjusted remotely.
It would be easy to connect up to bigger servo's like on the latest electric stab fins manufactured in Italy, it might be possible to build these from DC motors windings.


Seems to be made for the job........?

 

Indeed, all that's required is a small gyroscope, used on RC helicopters to stop weather cocking . The gyro automatically gives varying output to control the tail rotor servo which keeps the machine in the desired heading and counteracts wind effects on the tail of the heli. It's no different to the response on boats to waves, only the axis is tilted 90degrees.

Use the same feedback type , fed into an amplification circuit to control a circa 2kw DC motor for a circa 0.6sqm foil. Pivot point must be precisely located at aerodynamic center of the foil for minimal effort and energy consumption. No computer required.

An alternative would be via mechanical amplification, using radio control servos to actuate a more powerful mechanical system, such as valves of a hydraulic system ala americas cup dagger board rake adjustment system.

 

For anyone who is interested in electric zero speed stabilisers, there was a very interesting post on the MBM forum by Bartw fitting this type on his Canados planing boat.....http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?350520-Stabilizers-for-Blue-Angel-engineering-question