Dream 2700 glider with Bell Shaped Lift Distribution

Where this came from:

Since I was a child, flying has been my dream. Airplanes are my passion since I can remember. This is the desk showcase of my personally designed rc glider. The real one is 2.7 meters wingspan, and it has been designed, built and flight tested by me. 

My long term target is to build the real scale glider and be the pilot. For the time being, i enjoyed building the rc scale model, and 3D printing has been a key enabler for that. 

What you will get:

What i'm going to publish here is the table top version of it.  I have one on my desk, it looks futuristic with the streamlined fuselage pod, and the long swept wings! 

The model is very easy to print. It is mainly splitted into two halfs, that you can join with superglue. The most tricky job is to glue the two fins in position, you need firm hands. The main body parts have 2 alignment pins for easy alignment. A table stand is included as well, and fits with the hole on the fuselage belly. dont use glue for that, you may want to play with the model, and dream about blue skies and strong thermals bringing you to new heights! 

By the way, the stand itself it's a tribute to Reimar Horten, who designed the Ho IV glider in 1938. The stand resembles the shape of the Ho IV.

Why tailless gliders?

Simply because they look beautiful and sleek! This special configuration is very complex to be designed, but it offers some advantages that are nowadays raising again the attention. The unconventional geometry, coupled with a specific wing twist, allows to obtain a very low drag, and very good handling performances. During last decade, NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center further developed the concept, and tested it on several scale models. The chief scientist Albion Bowers was the man believing on it. 

Lets go big!

I was so excited that i decided to develop my own design based on this technology. The key is in the wing lift distribution, called Bell Shaped Lift Distribution. The BSLD gives the lowest induced drag for a fixed payload. 

Below the teaser revelation video of my Dream (yes, this is the name of the glider):

In the second video, you can see an happy pilot after the 4th test flight:

Flight performances were outstanding, and i'm already working on the second prototype, with some further improvements.

The Prusa MK3S contribution to my dream:

The desk model is obviously entirely printed with a Prusa MK3S. 

But also the bigger scale model got a lot of parts coming from Prusa technology. 3D printing allowed me to reduce significantly the manufacturing time and cost of the prototype.

The full scale RC model has a nylon 3D printed fuselage: It was printed on a large industrial printer, since it is 500 mm long. But all internal stiffening structures of the fuselage has been printed with Prusa MK3, in PLA (in white) and PETG for the most stressed components, like the electric motor support, linkages and wing joiners.

Next pictures shows the fuselage internal ribs and stiffeners:

Below you can see the final electronics setup. You can recognize all the orange PETG parts:

The servos supports were printed in PETG: 

The main wing is equipped with zig-zag turbulators, to facilitate the transition from laminar to turbulent flow, avoiding flow separations. Those turbulators were coming out perfect on the MK3:

Wings were built with composites vacuum bagging technology.

The fins blending strakes were printed in gray PLA:

Servo control horns are made with a carbon fiber sandwich over a PETG core structure:

And finally, another video with the assembly process:

If you want to read the full story, ther are 4 articles published on Medium: https://medium.com/rc-soaring-digest/dream-2700-a-tailless-tale-fab0ecd0295