MAD-1 “Rocinante”
It has not been long since the creation of Akaflieg Madrid. However, after a year developing easier projects, this year we start a bigger and more ambitious project than the ones preceding: our first airplane! The influence of our colleagues in different Akafliegs in Germany has inspired us and has given us hopes to try to start our own adventure as future aerospace engineers.
That is why, in collaboration with RACT (Real Aeroclub de Toledo) and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, this year we are amking our first steps in the design of our first sailplane, MAD-1 “Rocinante”, which will be used for new experiments and designs, and for flying, of course.
First of all, let us explain the name. As some of you may be wondering, this may seem a bit crazy idea. Therefore, the name MAD-1 is not only short for Madrid, but it is also a pun that seemed quite appropriate to us. On the other hand, the name Rocinante reminds us of Don Quixote, as it was the horse that took him across La Mancha (which, by the way, is the place where we fly) during his worldwide-known travels. All in all, it is a tribute to our culture and the personality of the character, who fought for his dreams under any circumstances.
Preliminary design
Firstly, we had to choose the type of airplane we wanted and, taking into account our needs and the information to which we had access, we decided that it would be a two-seater trainer with 20 meters of wingspan. With all this in mind, we started to use tools such as XFoil, XFLR5 or AVL in order to determine the main characteristics of our plane. Using data of similar airplanes as a reference, we got to the first iteration of Rocinante, something similar to this:
