Flight Test Results of a Subscale Super-STOL Aircraft

Abstract

This paper presents the results from initial flight tests of a 30% scale demonstrator of a blown-wing SuperSTOL concept aircraft, intended for operation from extremely short runways of 100 ft or less. The subscale demonstrator is aimed at investigating the maximum achievable in-flight lift coefficients with the blown wing, as well as the control and handling qualities with a mostly conventional aircraft configuration with unblown control surfaces. With a relatively modest amount of blowing power - a static thrust/weight of 0.45 - the flight tests show that the blown wing SuperSTOL concept can generate high lift coefficients greater than 10 in flight. It was observed that reducing the size of the propeller enabled larger CL values to be achieved. In high-CL flight the roll control authority of conventional ailerons was found to be marginal, partly due to the low fight dynamic pressure and partly due to the local stall over the unblown part of the aileron. In the configuration tested most of the elevator deflection was consumed to obtain pitch trim at low speed. A finite rotation rate to takeoff attitude was found to significantly contribute to the ground roll distance.