Spencer Lisenby Clocks Record-Breaking 882 km/h at Parker Mountain
The dynamic soaring legend notches the bar up. Again.
In a remarkable advancement of the state-of-the-art Spencer Lisenby, the renowned practitioner of the dynamic soaring (DS) flight regime, has broken the outright speed record for a model aircraft. On January 19th, 2021 Lisenby’s Kinetic Transonic DP hit 882 km/h (548 mph) at the famed Parker Mountain location which is the home of a number of record-breaking DS flights.
To put this speed in perspective, if you theoretically put the Transonic DP side-by-side with a 737NG at economy cruise, the sailplane leaves the 737 behind at about 28 km/h (18 mph). All without a drop of fuel.
Although we hope to have a more detailed article in a future issue of RCSD, the 3.3m (130") span Transonic DP had an all up weight of 9.0 kg (319 oz) during the flight, which works out to a wing loading of 183 g/dm² (60 oz/ft²). Lisenby estimates the maximum G-loading during the flight was in the region of 60 to 90 G. He credits Dirk Pflug, with some assistance from Stuttgart University in Germany, with the design of the airfoils. Thomas Pils did all of the CAD work and machined the fuselage molds while Jaroslav Čermák of the Czech Republic made molds for the wing and stabilizer.
When asked for comment subsequent to the flight, the unassuming Spencer Lisenby simply said:
“That was fun!”
We have so many questions for Spencer not only about his record-breaking flight but the path that led him to it, and where it leads from here. Which make us think he would be the perfect guest for a prototype episode of the still-in-the-concept-phase of the R/C Soaring Digest podcast. Please let us know if that would be as interesting for you, the potential listener, as it would be for us.
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