Can a Plane Fly With Offset wings? 

To any one wondering how it would fly in ground effect or if it can turn right, this video will answer all your questions!!👇 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zrH0QlKYqac.htmlsi=wn-rPbHM1OY1Grdm I also made a Patreon! Here it is and thx for checking it out! patreon.com/EternalProgression?Link&

“I’m an actual engineer!” No - you’re *better* - you’re a scientist! (from one scientist to another) You thought through what you knew, you made a testable hypothesis, and you did a great experiment to test that hypothesis. THAT is a scientist! Twice, actually - you also hypothesized that the flat column would interfere with airflow, and you tested that as well… and were right yet again! Very nice work indeed, and I’m sure your father couldn’t be happier to be proved wrong. You will go far :)

Cool experiment! A free body diagram will show that regardless of wing height offset on either side, the wings create the same rolling moment on each side which cancels each other out when in steady level flight. Now sideslip effects, especially with that big vertical mast, might be a different story.... I'm curious if you could 'feel' any significant differences in yaw or restoring roll in sustained left vs. right banks?

As someone currently studying engineering, this is so cool, because whilst this works on paper, seeing it fly is amazing. I would guess that your dad might have been right for the flying car though, as taking off from the floor introduces ground effect, which would actually have meant that the wing closer to the ground generated more lift.

As an Aerospace Engineer, the flight dynamics makes sense, so it’s not surprising that it works with minimal roll, but it’s cool to see the proof! Not something I’ve ever thought about because of the structural integrity of a single wing mounted above or below the fuselage.

How does it feel to know that Peter Sripol used your channel for inspiration and information? That's high honors, bro.

Very cool experiment!

Rule of thumb for pilots apparently is that 1/2 wingspan or less of height causes noticable ground effect, so it would definitely apply to offset wings during landing/takeoff. It probably contributes to the difficultly with rolling when taking off with the flying car, even if it doesn't matter once it's in flight.

I hope this kid realizes how blessed he is to have a father that freed and enabled this love of exploration and engineering. Frickin 10/10 video

Here's a suggestion based on your folding wing plane. Birds don't use their tails as elevators. They actually use them more for longitudinal control. The way birds control pitch is to move their wings forewards and backwards displacing the center of gravity from the center of lift. They move their wings a bit forewards which moves their CG to behind their center of lift which causes them to pitch up. Likewise they move their wings a bit back which produces a pitch down. I doubt it would take a lot of range of motion to give you pitch control. You could always have elevons as backup. But I think you should be able to pull this off.

Dad's are awesome - so are kids.... Congrats on proving your Dad wrong. Dad, congrats on raising someone who can prove you wrong and being audibly happy when they did.

Coming from someone who knows very very little about aerodynamics and planes, This is a damn cool plane. And big ups on taking the initiative of doing the experiments to get your proven results.

One well designed experiment is worth more than 1000 expert opinions

By many definitions, you ARE an actual engineer. Absolutely well done - this is how we find stuff out. Thank you. Subscribed!

You don't understaaaand how lucky you are to have been born when you were: In the late 70s and early 80s when I was 6-9 years old, I would take the electric motors out of various toys, and rig them up with oodles of batteries and fantasize about being able to get something airborne. There just wasn't the battery energy density available back then, to do it. If I were your age today, I'd be doing this too! I laughed and grinned like crazy through the test flights. Thanks, man. Happy trails.

I've got quite a bit of experience with aviation and aviation accessories. First off, Excellent experiment!! I love to see someone actually trying it out, instead of letting opinions rule the day. Even if it failed, you learn something. More things even. Second, and practically, it looks to me that you're getting equal lift from both wings, but your handling has some weight and balance/moment of force issues. Gravity is goin to want to make it a right angled "N", so your "Straight and level will have a left turn bias. Maybe try different wing lengths to compensate. Longer on top since the force acts on the furthest away, and you want to bring the left side up. Or go stubby on the right side, but lack of lift is usually a bad thing for aerobatics. Great vid, dude!

The relationship you have with your dad is beautiful. He sounds extremely impressed and proud of you

Came for the crazy plane, stayed for the scenery. Can't believe that thing not only flew but, flew well. And, what a beautiful place you live in. It's just gorgeous! So nice seeing the interaction with your dad too, you're so lucky to be able to spend such precious moments together. I lost my dad when l was 17 - he's been gone 47 years, and l still miss him.

Making this comment before watching the whole video. But my guess why the flying car had an issue on takeoff might be a difference in Ground effect between the wings.

This is just wholesome. If I were your dad I'd be very proud and be having so much fun with these builds. Love this sort of tangible old fashioned fun.

So as a person who’s daily job is to work on aircraft. Your father is partially correct at the start, the left lower wing had more lift than the right due to ground effect. Although once it had gotten up into the air the offset wings shouldn’t have been too much of an issue assuming the wing area is the same and they are over or just ever so slightly behind the center of gravity. As a quote from an engineer I know. We can make a box fly and have lift with enough speed and power.

I'm really excited to see this, but I can already tell you that being so close to the ground, the "lower" wing is "longer" technically, due to the ground effect. It doesn't take much distance to make this effect negligible but it will be really obvious close to the ground for launching.

Down low one wing will get greater ground effect than the other. It won't matter as much on this small scale though.

Fellow Aerospace Engineer. This works well because your center of mass is equidistant from the center of mass (or at least within an inch or so on either direction). If you had mounted one wing normally and the other wing up high, I have a strong feeling your results would have differed. This is a simple statics problem many undergrads are given in physics and entry level engineering courses. If its a simple FBD with one lever in line with the center of rotation and the other lever mounted up 8" or so with both creating a force straight up, the higher up wing loses some of its torque since the force is no longer perpendicular to the point of rotation. If you offset the wings like you did both up and down here, that loss is then negated by the other wing also losing some of its torque on the center of rotation. That is why I believe you found success with this model where as elevating only a single wing would have led to instability. Naturally you would need to add a little bit of ballast along the bottom of the fuselage to bring the CG back down to its normal spot with a wing being mounted so high. Edit: I went and built the FBD. Something interesting as you elevate one of the wings is the center of force for the elevated wing gets further from the center of rotation as well. In theory this would create more torque than the lower wing up until a certain point where it would quickly decrease. I kind of want to run something in matlab now to see where the theoretical balance points are and how it changes as you continue raising it. :)

See how the tips of the wings end up on the same plan. That is your balancing of lift. Put anything inside and it gets tossed around like a ragdoll on take-off which is why we don't build airplanes like that. But a little physics on airplanes could have answered your question, but your method is 100000000x cooler! Awesome video too!

I studied aeronautical engineering. Something that jumped out at me is the lower wing essentially has a vertical winglet on the upper airfoil surface at the root formed by the “mast” that will likely help reduce vortices. They would be normally be called wingtip vortices, but these are at the wing root. So… Roottip vortices…..? The upper wing won’t have as much benefit. The effect is probably not terribly noticeable at this scale, but you could run a vertical fin longitudinally on top of the vertical mast to help equalize the effect.

Obviously different in ground effect, but beyond that it looks like symmetry handles any questions.

Its not about the offset in general, its about the distance of each wing to the center of rotation. If both wings apply equal lift, but one has more leverage (by being further away from the center of rotation), it will cause rotation in flight.

my grandma on my dad's side would be proud of you, she worked as aerospace engineer or something like that, seeing this would put a smile on her face as it did mine.

This is the first vertically asymmetric airplane I’ve ever seen. Never doubted for a second!

Now, the next question.. how far can the wings be offset!? 😬

"I'm an actual engineer. No I'm not" YES YOU ARE. You designed something and tested it. Don't let impostor syndrome get in your head. You might be engineering on a smaller scale but you are designing testing and iterating on those designs. AWESOME job. I wish i had these skills at your age. Glad your father is helping you learn too. Edit: Definitely subbed too.

One of the cool things about Flite Test planes is that they make it really easy to experiment around with weird designs just to see what you can get away with. You can really learn a lot! By the way, I saw your swing-wing at Flite Fest and did a double take. Cool stuff!

This is a great demonstration! It feels like the sort of thing an applied aerospace professor would keep around to prove a point

I admit I was skeptical, amazing results! They say it’s not how gracefully the bear waltzes, it’s the fact that it waltzes at all!

When I saw the thumbnail, my gut reaction was that it would roll like crazy. Then I stopped to think and realised that the moment arm of the lift does not change with the vertical wing offset. Just goes to show you can't trust your gut on some things. Kudos for doing the experiment.

Great job! It works as expected. There are two reasons why it is not practical. 1. If there is a difference in the air pressure on the wings can cause the plane to roll. This makes it harder to operate. But in this case is very small. 2. The offset wing design creates more drag making it less fuel efficient and the speed is lower.

The offset wings effect will cancel each other out but if the plane is in a roll and side slipping the resultant skin friction will create a moment on the aircraft. Low wings vs high wings with a restoring roll on high wings. Overall great way to test the effect of the offset.

you're lucky your dad encourages in such a positive manner, appreciate him like mad cause he wont always be there

Cool plane and that yard is beautiful!

I always wondered if an wing offset would fly. Thank you for proving it. I will have to build one for my own experiments. Thank you again. That is good stuff.

So wholesome. This dude is great. He also has an amazing dad. The support dad has for his kid's passion is just..... hard to find words... It is a role model for what parents should be for their child. Keep exploring your creative freedoms. Keep that fire alive.

I just completely stumbled on this. Wow good for you, and I really enjoyed how you and your dad interacted and how encouraging his attitude was. You guys seem to have an amazing relationship. Keep it up!

Always worth putting people's assumptions in place with an actual physical test Nicely done :P

this is one of the most wholesome rc videos i have seen in a long time! fantastic work!

Before I even watch, I can already tell that the ground effect will cause a tendency to roll as the lower wing has more ground effect than the larger wing at low altitude. This can be felt if you try to buzz the ground or do a landing attempt, or if you make a much larger model with more wingspan.

One time me and a friend were bored and started making paper airplanes. One of the paper airplanes we make is really great because it could be thrown across the football field. We ended up fully cutting off one of the wings, and it flew better than before.

Looks like you have slightly more material on the right hand side. And it would probably be a good idea to make the "tower" round or more aerodynamic...? Cool experiment!

Excellent video! As experts in ground effect we can confirm to obvious observation that the lower wing would create more lift and less drag close to the ground. With a shifting aerodynamic center it would destabilise the craft in pitch as well. What we noticed though is that the craft wants to fly in a particular roll angle. Probably because of different values of induced drag as commented by others earlier because of different 'root vortices' etc. Great work and keep um coming!

Words can not describe how much I enjoyed this! What a demonstration! Excellent work! 😄😄😄

Real nice mythbusting! Simple and unequivocal. I wonder if the main factor isn't that the torque each wing puts on the body should compensate the other. This could be tested by keeping the same body, wing, and "offset beam", but 'sliding' the attachment point of the body up and down the pillar. To rule out static torque and get more vertical lift out of the wings, counterweights making each wing balanced across the offset beam could also help. This channel is a joy!

It feels weird, but yep! The primary reasons we don’t do this are structural and aerodynamic. 1) can’t have a structural spar across both wings to prevent them from bending/tearing off when loaded 2) excess drag induced by the vertical offset structure 3) more induced drag due to finite wing effects Otherwise, on a small plane like this, it’s practically identical.

In my first semester of engineering school we made Tiny Trainers (my group’s had janky electronics so we had to use another group’s, I still have the video lol), so this is really cool to see, even cooler is how your setup flew much better than ours! Good work!

Kid if you keep uploading like this, you are blowing up.. in a good way. Wonderful stuff! Also gotta say I was skeptical the offset wing would be stable but I stand corrected.

This is the first video of yours I've seen, and it was a great little experiment. I would never have believed it would work either. Very cool.

From one engineer to another: well done! 👏

I truly love your channel! You are challenging standard concepts and you found new things... Keep it up, keep them coming. I learned from your content!

Yes. Yes you are an engineer…. Good fun. And with your dad too.

I LOVE TO SEE the sense of free and open curiosity driving this expereiment... Bravo

I am a Mechanical Engineer, I did some quick force diagrams on the back of an envelope: If you offset both wings in opposite directions an equal amount then the plane will be fine, this is what you built. If you offset them by different amounts then you will get a torque and the plane will want to twist. Also those are aileron rolls not barrel rolls. (the Star Fox 64 videogame is the main source of these getting confused)

Love the video, truly awesome to watch that little thing fly :)

That was excellent! It's always so satisfying to take a theory, test it in practice, and prove yourself right. Well done 😊

This blew my mind. I for sure thought it would have some weird roll characteristics. This was such a cool video.

You are well on your way to being an engineer. Well done! Keep questioning IF you can do things and keep trying your ideas. This is impressive.

Love it, one thing with the swing wing/offset wing designs is that it can create a bias to roll in a certain direction if the 2 wings aren't offset the same distance from the center body perfectly. this shouldn't effect any forward or vertical capabilities (thrust + lift), but depending on how different the distance from the offset wings are from the CG, a roll and yaw bias will be introduced as the wing further from the CG will essentially have more control authority with the roll/yaw due to its moment of inertia. (the swing wing design should roll faster in the direction of the lower wing, the test plane [which is awesome btw] looks to have the left wing higher from the CG than the lower wing in the video, so it should have more control over the roll of the craft). would be good fun to slowly bring one of the wings closer to the main body and see how that effects the flight profile.

Very cool vid. Definitely had to check this one out and impressed with how well it flew. Good job!

I love how happy this makes you! Keep the joy, mate!

Dude, That is awesome and you really are an engineer. I was laughing (actually giggling) watching it fly.

The way the wings generate lift does not change from when you have 2 wings on one level. The only thing I can see is that the lower wing can be less stable then the upper wing as the center of mass differs between the 2 wings. awesome little project! awesome to see you bust this myth!!!

This video is important and the world doesn't know. The best part is the ending!!! The Dad and son are bonding!!! Great Video My Guy!!! He should sell this!!! I think it would be fun and provide a mind blowing effect!!!

DUDE!! This is awesome! Just watching your flying experiment and listening to your excitement, makes me feel like was it was to be young again. Thank you!

Shoutout from Peter Sripol!! Congrats on all the success bro, well deserved! 😀😀

Huge improvement, show the good and bad and let the video fly!!!!! Thanks for the content!

I already have a practical use for the plane. Game spotting or air traffic road monitoring. Great side views

I love it‼️ I was saying 👍 YES👍 the entire time with a huge smile on my face when it worked!!!! Great for you!!!!! Thanks for sharing 🤩

Never seen your videos before. but you got my approval. This is great. Liked and Subscribed! Good job. And yes, you are an engineer. :D

This is one of the most remarkable things I've seen on YT. Myth busters make me smile. 🙂

I had to watch. This is just so insane. I truly had doubts, but you proved it… obviously your future direction is engineering…totally amazing. GREAT JOB. :))

This channel is going to blow up if you can keep thinking of novel ideas like this. Good luck and I hope I'm getting in on the ground floor.

Yes you are an engineer buddy… you have that inquisitive mindset and clearly your imagination is right up there…. Great to see young people like you using your talent. Trust me buddy, you might not yet realise it, but all of your experiences come back and help you find solutions later in life. Experience is more important than qualifications mate. Doing a great job

I believe the problem only occurs in ground effect heights. Dope experiment :D

Smiled the whole way through this :) thank you!

Very cool. I could see it would work from the start as long as CG is right and the wing pitch is equal. Now just for fun try putting the rudder on that vertical section that the wings are attached to. Maybe as the only rudder or make the center rudder small with a slightly reduced tail rudder or vice versa.

This is awesome! Keep the weird ideas coming!

Congratulations, you've achieved certification of beyond aerospace engineer! The FAA now needs to catch up to you. You're a creator from my point of view of a biplane with offset wings. Very squirrely in ground effect for wheel roll but controllable with modified control surfaces. Salute

Thinking outside the box, I’m very impressed. Good job.

This video really raised my sprit. It's great fun and proving your dad wrong was the inspiration for many inventions and discoveries. You should offer your idea to the navy and marines, they could fit in many more planes onan aircraft carrier

I love seeing non-traditional designs like this that force people to really think about the physics involved. I actually LOL'ed when your dad made some comment about one wing creating more lift than the other just because of their position. Great video and love watching the process.

this is a great achievement young man, you are certainly headed somewhere your engineering future awaits..

Awesome to see this crazy idea work. A mad scientist of aviation. Congratulations.

Lovely flying field and epic Frankenbuild!

that could be an alien spaceship... lol we've got a glimpse of the ''flying boat'' though... that thing is awesome... on grass, on water and on air... and it made perfect ''dives''...

That is so amazing. Wow! Talk about thinking out of the box👍

That looks so funky, I love it

Bro, that was sick! Great video, def earned my sub!

Offsetting the wings roughly equal on both top and bottom of the center of axis, as done here, shouldnt show much effect, as proven. very well done! I suspect that if they were both, above the center of axis and offset diffrently, the torque that could be prduced by a higher offset wing, would produce a roll effect on the craft.

Awesome work!! Your enthusiasm is contagious!!

Cool demonstration. Works exactly like it should, the forces on each of the wings are basically the same. Clearly it's not the optimal arrangement for a number of reasons, but that shouldn't stop you from flying it. If you put a strong enough motor and prop on a brick you can probably get controlled flight.

Well done! Fantastic idea and great job proving it. Keep up the good work.

Ok. I like that you're fearless in your creations! So I have a suggestion for something to try. Why? Because I've never seen it done in RC: a triebflugel. And I'm not trying to get you to figure out how to mount wingtip rockets. But you could mount wingtip propeller motors and mount its battery, receiver, and servo to the wing itself on a different channel than the tail surfaces channel. I feel like it could be done. Hardest parts in my opinion are 1) how to mount the spin wing so it doesn't interfere with roll, 2) How to mount items inside spin wing and balance it, and finally 3) figuring out how much control authority to give the tail plane (by basically scaling it and/or its control surfaces). Anyone could expect slight to moderate changes in scale and proportion since the original never even got to the test phase. But still, to build anything even close would be amazing.