Tornado glider?!

[Arugela]

Was watching some random youtube videos on tornadoes. I was wondering if anyone has every just tried to design a very rugged unmanned glidder to watch tornadoes develop. something cheap enough you can do repeated hit and miss attempts to get as much of a tornado formation as possible and just watch them form. Even try to rotate around one and or get in the middle to catch all aspects of it.

It would seem like a cool project since you would need to account for alot of things and potentially armor it like a tank. It might be fun to try to develop more advanced and light weight ways to bounce stuff of a plane to deal with the high velocity objects.. Assuming they are that high velocity that is. If not it would be a fun way to to play with aerodynamics. Would it be difficult to get it to be aerodynamically sound in all point of a tornado? I would think that might effect things a bit with the sheer wind speed and directional changes.

[Scotius]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/student-storm-chasers-develop-drones-to-probe-killer-tornadoes/

Alas, not much info in this article, and it's kinda old (2014). And don't count on a manned version - no aviation agency that isn't cartoonishly dumb and\or evil will greenlight such project

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, Scotius said:

no aviation agency that isn't cartoonishly dumb and\or evil will greenlight such project

Last time I checked, If you build >50% of a craft yourself, you don't need a valid license to fly it yourself.   Plus I believe the FAA will allow you a tail number based on it being an experimental aircraft.   So as long as the guy building it is the one who flies it, there isn't a real need (legally) for an agency to get involved.    My info might be out of date on this though.  

I had always wanted to design and build a land yacht that would be able to "buzz" a tornado....

[YNM]

6 hours ago, Arugela said:

... and potentially armor it like a tank.

If it's only a waterspout you just need a raincoat.

[Scotius]

Uh... isn't waterspout a tornado over the water? Lack of debris would make it (maybe?) less dangerous, but winds would still be brutal.

[Zeiss Ikon]

5 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Last time I checked, If you build >50% of a craft yourself, you don't need a valid license to fly it yourself.   Plus I believe the FAA will allow you a tail number based on it being an experimental aircraft.   So as long as the guy building it is the one who flies it, there isn't a real need (legally) for an agency to get involved.    My info might be out of date on this though.

This has been wildly incorrect for at least the fifty years or so I've been interested in aircraft and flight, at least in the USA.

If you build the aircraft yourself, you must still have it inspected by a qualified/licensed Airframe and Powerplant inspector before you'll be issued a tail number, even as an "experimental" type.  And even with an experimental aircraft (which includes all homebuilt craft, even if they're a model that has hundreds flying -- because no two builders work exactly alike), you need to register the aircraft and have the appropriate license (Light Sport if it's below a certain weight and has no more than two seats, or General otherwise for fixed wing, or helicopter etc. to match the aircraft type).

The only exception to the licensing requirement for flight is an Ultralight -- by USA definition, this aircraft must weigh less than 254 lb dry (no pilot, no fuel), have only a single seat, carry no more than five US gallons of fuel, and have a level flight speed not exceeding (IIRC) 55 kt (about 62 mph).  No registration of the aircraft is then needed, and no license for the pilot (though instruction is VERY STRONGLY recommended; you can kill yourself just as dead in a fabric-and-tube airplane as you can in a Cessna).  There are also restrictions on where you can fly an ultralight, for the protection of the public -- generally, you can't fly over densely populated land or into controlled airspace (near airports with towers, above a graduated set of altitudes at various distances), and you may only fly them in day VFR conditions (5,000 ft or higher ceiling, 5 miles visibility, daylight).

To the OP: tornado conditions are specifically "no-fly" by FAA regulations (I'll stick with USA here, because most tornadoes over land occur in North America), so manned flight into a tornado (or even during a tornado warning) would require an FAA waiver, which is unlikely to be granted.  Weather conditions during a tornado are often such that remote control would be prone to interference (lightning, heavy rain, etc.), and the entire area is hazardous; it's unlikely anyone by storm chasers would tke the risk of trying to control a drone or R/C airplane/sailplane into a tornado.  Then there's turbulence; generally, anything light enough to fly will be prone to being torn apart by the turbulence in the funnel of a tornado (this region is the one that breaks hardwood trees into fragments, lifts cars and destroys houses, as well as occasionally implanting hundreds of pieces of straw -- grass stems! -- into a power pole or similar).

There was a science fiction story published in Analog magazine in the 1980s, as I recall, about flying a custom built aircraft into "tornado watch" conditions, and accidentally triggering the formation of a tornado, then getting caught in the funnel.  This was fiction, and I think it's unlikely any actual aircraft (even one overbuilt from carbon fiber, the way the one in the story was) could survive conditions inside a tornado funnel -- or that a pilot could maintain consciousness due to the G forces once caught in the winds there.

[KerikBalm]

FYI, its FAR part 103 that you are describing there for anyone interested.

I became quite familiar with that part, and yes, you should definitely get instruction even if its not legally required.

[magnemoe]

10 hours ago, Scotius said:

Uh... isn't waterspout a tornado over the water? Lack of debris would make it (maybe?) less dangerous, but winds would still be brutal.

You would loose aerodynamic stability, wind speed would come for your side and be higher than you maximum speed. 
In short I don't think any plane would work well, best would probably be to drop wing before entering. 
An missile would probably also work but would spend less time inside. 

[MaverickSawyer]

Y'all have never seen RC gliders doing shear wave runs, have you...

They're hitting upwards of 300 mph and pulling north of 20Gs continuous. It's pretty crazy. I suspect that one of those gliders might be able to survive the winds... But debris would certainly kill it.

[Zeiss Ikon]

1 hour ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Y'all have never seen RC gliders doing shear wave runs, have you...

They're hitting upwards of 300 mph and pulling north of 20Gs continuous. It's pretty crazy. I suspect that one of those gliders might be able to survive the winds... But debris would certainly kill it.

Actually, the absolute R/C speed record belongs to gliders flying dynamic lift (wind shear) -- and it's well above 400 mph.  One of those gliders (heavy fiberglass or carbon fiber airframes) might indeed survive the wind, perhaps even the shear (150 m/s change over less than 100 m), but the turbulence inside the funnel can greatly exceed even that level of force.  Even if the turbulence doesn't just break the airframe, it would tend to upset the craft, when it's already in conditions where the operator would have trouble maintaining visual contact and orientation.

[LordFerret]

2 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

operator would have trouble maintaining visual contact and orientation

In that kind of situation, you wouldn't be relying on anything visual. More than likely, you'd be flying on instruments, remotely.

 

 

[LordFerret]

18 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Last time I checked, If you build >50% of a craft yourself, you don't need a valid license to fly it yourself.   Plus I believe the FAA will allow you a tail number based on it being an experimental aircraft.   So as long as the guy building it is the one who flies it, there isn't a real need (legally) for an agency to get involved.    My info might be out of date on this though.  

I had always wanted to design and build a land yacht that would be able to "buzz" a tornado....

 

12 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

- snip -

If you build the aircraft yourself, you must still have it inspected by a qualified/licensed Airframe and Powerplant inspector before you'll be issued a tail number, even as an "experimental" type.  And even with an experimental aircraft (which includes all homebuilt craft, even if they're a model that has hundreds flying -- because no two builders work exactly alike), you need to register the aircraft and have the appropriate license (Light Sport if it's below a certain weight and has no more than two seats, or General otherwise for fixed wing, or helicopter etc. to match the aircraft type).

The only exception to the licensing requirement for flight is an Ultralight -- by USA definition, this aircraft must weigh less than 254 lb dry (no pilot, no fuel), have only a single seat, carry no more than five US gallons of fuel, and have a level flight speed not exceeding (IIRC) 55 kt (about 62 mph).  No registration of the aircraft is then needed, and no license for the pilot (though instruction is VERY STRONGLY recommended; you can kill yourself just as dead in a fabric-and-tube airplane as you can in a Cessna).  There are also restrictions on where you can fly an ultralight, for the protection of the public -- generally, you can't fly over densely populated land or into controlled airspace (near airports with towers, above a graduated set of altitudes at various distances), and you may only fly them in day VFR conditions (5,000 ft or higher ceiling, 5 miles visibility, daylight).

To the OP: tornado conditions are specifically "no-fly" by FAA regulations (I'll stick with USA here, because most tornadoes over land occur in North America), so manned flight into a tornado (or even during a tornado warning) would require an FAA waiver, which is unlikely to be granted.  Weather conditions during a tornado are often such that remote control would be prone to interference (lightning, heavy rain, etc.), and the entire area is hazardous; it's unlikely anyone by storm chasers would tke the risk of trying to control a drone or R/C airplane/sailplane into a tornado.  Then there's turbulence; generally, anything light enough to fly will be prone to being torn apart by the turbulence in the funnel of a tornado (this region is the one that breaks hardwood trees into fragments, lifts cars and destroys houses, as well as occasionally implanting hundreds of pieces of straw -- grass stems! -- into a power pole or similar).

- snip -

Without regard to flying anything into a tornado, which apparently there are some ideas out there to use drones to kill tornadoes; Anything you send up into the air these days requires you to carry liability insurance ... model rockets, R/C planes, home built or experimental anything.

[Gargamel]

16 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

This has been wildly incorrect for at least the fifty years or so I've been interested in aircraft and flight, at least in the USA.

To be honest, after thinking about it, If I would have to quote my source, it would be old Popular Mechanics from the 60's, so I wasn't technically incorrect there.....