Spencer Lisenby Shatters Own Record, Pushes Transonic DP to 907km/h
The dynamic soaring ace extends his dominance of the outright model aircraft speed record extending back over a decade.
BIRD SPRING PASS, California, February 21, 2023 — Flying a Transonic DP ballasted to 9.2kg (325oz) Spencer Lisenby rocketed past his own dynamic soaring (DS) speed record to clock a run of 907km/h (564mph). As the New RC Soaring Digest reported back in January of 2021, Lisenby’s previous record was 882km/h (548mph) set at Parker Mountain. This makes the new record nearly a 3% improvement over the previous one.
It what amounted to near perfect conditions at Bird Spring Pass— 30m/s (108km/h or 67mph) winds gusting higher, sunny and cool—Lisenby also flew his smaller 2m Kinetic DP to 847km/h (526mph) making it the second fastest DS plane in the world despite its smaller span. Also on that day, Bruce Tebo flew his own Transonic DP to 874km/h (543mph) making the Californians currently without equal in the field.
In conversation with the New RC Soaring Digest subsequent to setting the record, Lisenby provided this additional interesting detail:
“As a matter of convenience, when DSing, we measure speeds at a slower part of the circuit. Had we measured on the down leg rather than the up leg, we would have measured a ground speed in excess of 600mph and perhaps as high as 630mph! That makes the peak mach number in the order of 0.84.”
When asked what was next, Spencer commented that: “The Transonic DP was landed safely, felt great at these speeds, and seems to have more left in it.”
We’ll continue to track the interesting and important flights of Lisenby and Tebo, and will provide updates as they are available.
©2023 The New RC Soaring Digest Staff
Resources
- Spencer Lisenby Clocks Record-Breaking 882 km/h at Parker Mountain in the January, 2021 issue of the New RC Soaring Digest. — “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…”
- New World Record! 564 mph by Spencer Lisenby video by Steven Welsh on YouTube. — The complete, nearly five minute video from which the six second clip above was extracted.
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