Bending Wings To Adjust Center of Lift. Does It Work?

Welcome to another episode of Trailmakers! Today I am attempting to make a plane fly and control itself in the air by flexing and changing its wing shape instead of just angling control surfaces. Will it work?
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About Trailmakers:
In the toughest motoring expedition in the universe, you and your friends will build your own vehicles to cross a dangerous wasteland. Explore, crash horribly, use your wits to build a better rig, and get as far as you can with whatever spare parts you find on your way.
Welcome to the Ultimate Expedition!
Journey over grueling mountains, hazardous swamps, and bone-dry deserts on a distant world far from civilization - it is just you, your fellow adventurers and the amazing, jet-powered hover-buggy you built yourself. Explore, crash your vehicle, build a better one, and get as far as you can with whatever spare parts you find along your way.
Trailmakers is about building very awesome vehicles and machines, but you don’t need an engineering degree to get started. The intuitive builder will get you going in no time. Everything you build is made from physical building blocks. Each block has unique features like shape, weight and functionality. They can be broken off, refitted and used to build something new. Individually the blocks are fairly simple, but combined the possibilities are endless.
Expedition Mode is the challenging campaign mode of Trailmakers. You are competing in an off-world rally expedition with only a few building blocks to get you started. You must build, tinker with and rebuild your machine to progress. Journey through a big world, overcome deep gorges, angry wildlife and dangerous weather to progress and find new parts that will juice up your machine. The world in Expedition Mode will test your survival skills and ingenuity.
Sandbox Mode is where you want to head for an unrestricted, sandbox, vehicle-building experience. Here you can build anything you can dream of, and play around with it in the world of Trailmakers. It is a great place to test out crazy machines, and experiment with the physics engine. With tons of different blocks, hinges, thrusters and interactive vehicle parts - the skybox is the limit.
Trailmakers is even more fun if you play it with other people. Build cool vehicles and compete in mini-game modes with your friends or other Trailmakers online. Build a helicopter, send it to your friend, and shoot them out of the sky. Put two seats on a tank, and let your friend control the turret. As we get further in Early Access development Expedition Mode will also be adapted to multiplayer.
Learn more about the game on www.playtrailma... #scrapman #trailmakers

[@javiercasas1565]

Well scrapman, you might want to try to put more power on that, if the plane stalls after turning too much, maybe you can just force it to not stall by making it faster, it might work so it's worth a try.

[@Franktamas]

Thrust does not really work against spins (stalling) IRL if it is an air detachment issue.

[@dominiccoppernoll8498]

if he removed the Lifting bodies in his tail and just used the paddles it would fly so much smoother

[@andreyemelyan5267]

this may be not the case, because when the plane stoles - it loses so much speed, and starts to go down because of lack of lift, and this is not what we see. Actually the plane starts to go down because it tilts forwards so much, that the vector of moving through air goes beneath the threshold , that pitch control requires, (based on fact, that the plane need to move with air pushing underneath to controls to work) and air begins to push from above

[@DrPotato0]

@@andreyemelyan5267 so ur saying if he tries to recover and tried to pitch up he would be actually be pitching down even further right?

[@dominiccoppernoll8498]

@@andreyemelyan5267 hence why i said to remove the lifting bodies in the tail aka the wings and replace them with flat lifting bodies like the paddles

[@NoobPlays86420]

The plane was flexing both literally and figuratively

[@minecraftmax9503]

😂😂

[@jaxcyclops218]

Yessir

[@guyfromfuture1918]

Lol

[@aidenarts3252]

😂lol😂

[@justadam358]

did you turn off seat controls? Because if you didn't its possible that it was affecting the results since the plane is quite light.

[@thefaulnt3562]

No, he did not you can see it at 10:27

[@Xmar4]

dude, I love the ingenuity of everything Scrapman does lol

[@johncage5368]

Nice work! Getting from a rather sketchy idea to "flies around the block" so fast is fantastic.

[@Kickerofthetar]

I made a similar thing during my campaign, but instead of a plane and center of lift, I used a helicopter and center of thrust. Two rotors attached to hinges and pistons. Hinges would move the rotors forward and backward for pitch, a servo would pitch the rotors forward/backward for yaw, and pistons would push the rotors away from the body for roll. It was surprisingly controllable, especially compared to how this plane looks :p

[@pcenero]

I feel like you essentially made a bird but without the flapping lol. Angle sensors that emergency kick in whenever stalls occur to allow wings to act as normal elevator y might help. Edit: Or you could have the wings level itself to the ground like real birds (generally, on average) do.

[@ethanelliott9250]

totally like a bird, except a bird can also use its tail feathers to help angle itself (i.e. up and down).

[@poomonyoutube1607]

6:36 "And here goes Scrapman, attempt for a somersault, perfect posture... Ooof, it's a splat! Unfortunately, judges rule this attempt as failure."

[@sketchfox2391]

There actually was a plane concept without any control surfaces The Vickers Swallow was supposed to control itself by changing the center of lift with sweeping wings. It also lacked a tailfin which it accounted for by independently moving the angle of each engine to keep it stable, like how a rocket moves the engines

[@Benitoite0]

Wonder if that plane could to VTOL with the gimbal engine

[@tropicalvikingcreations]

Vector thrust

[@melissabloom8747]

ScrapMan, just yesterday I found out about Lun-class Ekranoplan. It's the only ground effect vehicle to be operationally deployed as a warship by the Soviet and Russian Navy. I think it would be awesome to build in Trailmaker.

[@cbadcruiser]

Wing warping was actually the first way of controlling planes. It was how the Wright brothers controlled their plane. I think one of the main reasons it didn’t take on is because the Wright brothers patented the wing warping forcing other inventors to use different methods of control.

[@brambaass5491]

Scrapman: flexplane My brain: thats a lot of damage

[@TheCardq]

You know, I think it mightve been easier to get the roll to work if you had kept it in the four wing form, but this journey was massively more interesting.

[@DanyF02]

6:35 The plane heard the captain call "Brace for impact!" 8:07 Always do your stretches before physical activities.

[@mr.mcmorbid]

should use the yaw control to help with the "adverse yaw" induced from the roll. Like flying a real plane you would lead into the roll with a little yaw input to prevent the nose from going out in the opposite direction. also more air speed

[@mousey942]

Here's a free idea. If you can control the plane by moving the center of lift. Would it not also be possible to make the same thing but with the center of mass moving instead of the center of lift. Great video as always!!

[@kylewall9107]

I was expecting the scrunching of the wing to be a feature where you could go through smaller openings

[@kurtisam]

I think the reason the pitch stops working after angling down to far is because the direction the plane is facing is now below the direction it is traveling in, and the wings start to experience a negative force rather than a positive one. If I'm correct, when you pitch down too far, the control should still work, however it will be inverted. (ie wings forward to go down and back to go up.) If you wanted to get fancy, you could use an angle sensor to detect this and compensate by inverting the control.

[@Pystro]

Yup, that's the problem. For a purely mechanical solution you could articulate the wings around the front edge such that the trailing edge is allowed to droop down (but not lift up). That would mean that any wind coming at the wing from above would pitch the wing up; and if you don't make the same change for the tail wings your whole plane would pitch up. This may need a small counterweight in front of the wing so that it's balanced against gravity (especially important at low speeds). That way only the lift of the wing will influence it's angle of attack.

[@yoriichitsugikuni5482]

Hey, ScrapMan, try making the wings go up and down separately so you can spin and maybe roll Edit: What I mean is make roll upward and downward

[@thomaskersting9935]

Let's call it "the first air bender"!😂

[@frankgelder8519]

it could be a cool multiplayer monday thing to do "can we make this work?", where each participant tries to find their own solution to a given weird problem like the one in this video

[@RobertBarfield]

2:09 2:12 I love your videos

[@AhoyYoutube]

The last video and this one are some of his best videos.

[@Skyblade12]

So, you are correct in that no one would do this in reality. Not just because of the ridiculousness of the concept, though, but because of the engineering troubles. Swing wing designs already suffer from problems with all the stresses going through a single joint. Having all those hinges as multiple points of failure would basically ensure that the wing tore itself apart.

[@apersunthathasaridiculousl1890]

6:20 he wants a hug

[@Rath-cd9ht]

This is really cool

[@jickhertz4124]

Very creative build! I saw that it reacted much faster pitching down than up, how about moving the center of lift forwards so that it wants to pitch up on purpose then? This will also make it less likely to pitch to far down!

[@PatchyConvert]

Scrapman going to the scrap yard, going to collect some scrap parts. While scrap metal plays in the backdrop! XD

[@incorporationoflag5166]

Now now that looks cool

[@cadetkohr5508]

What you need is yaw. The reason why turning is so difficult is because you're constantly in an uncontrolled turn, meaning you're drifting, not turning. You should be banking to change the direction and speed of the turn, and use the rudder to execute it. This is how flying actually works. You use rudder and ailerons in conjunction to turn, not just one or the other. This would most likely fix this thing's problems.

[@shadowfang6613]

The movement of the wings reminds me of the ornothopter video. Would love to see a ornothopter dragon fight with you and the boys

[@BlackIndium]

I like how my KZbin notifications label Scrapman as important. It knows my priorities.

[@mattymerr701]

The stall characteristics are probably so abysmal because you are trying to control it from the front instead of the tail. Awesome that it worked though!

[@fruitlooponthefloor3528]

please continue doing these i love trailmakers and your the only good youtuber that plays it

[@kittyn5222]

I was thinking why the video late but then I realized DAY LIGHT SAVING TIME

[@brenthomason269]

Hey Squam and you should do a video where will you have to show you your first build planes ever and then trying to figure out your toys because it was so long ago probably if you want to do a video like that I would like to see it

[@Me_Grimlocked]

The best name for the plane The fairley flexible functioning flyer

[@the_7th_sun]

interesting tid bit. the wright brothers used a method of control called "wing warping" where the entire wing was the control surface, similar to your design except it used the twisting of the wings

[@RoxxBeatZ]

maybe the wing bending on the backwings works better?

[@sleepygeek2821]

It would be cool to see you make a train that lays it own tracks :)

[@yeetmcmeat]

I wonder if a telescoped wing, like those toy lightsabers, would be feasible in real life to get wing only roll. Plus if there's enough available tolerance between the telescoped parts you might be able to bend them forward and back aswell. I'm not sure a similar wing to what I'm imagining could be made in trailmakers unless you mod it.

[@mr.mcmorbid]

i have a plane on the steam workshop that does just that, wings move forward and aft, i also have them sweep fwd and back, kinda like the F14 tomcat.. I think i called it WTF

[@agenttex25]

try making a plane that uses "wing warping" instead of normal role controls

[@lemonkee834]

Idea: You could see if you could use something to block aerodynamics? As in cover part of a wing with a flat surface to move in the other direction in flight

[@gamerxdpro9112]

First i thought scrapman will not upload and i would name the plane bend plane because it bend

[@isaacnoel4022]

Yoo the plane dances!? “dancing swing-wing” there’s a name 😂

[@oskiboskiyt5699]

Hey SCRAPMAN, Idea for another unusual aircraft to recreate in Trailmakers: Lockheed CL-1201 It wasn't actually built but it was an impressive concept plane and was meant to be the biggest plane to fly the skies for a while. I think it would be nice to see you trying to recreate such a massive vehicle in Trailmakers and make it actually fly, you could even use your no build limit mod if that helps. Obviously it wouldn't have to be 1:1 scale because it would probably crash the game but still would be interesting to see you build on such a large scale.

[@DanielleWhite]

11:22 Icarus has entered the chat. This design made me think of the old ValueJet logo.

[@adrianmerasanz2625]

0:00 gives me vibes of GOW (god of war)

[@Drefar]

this 1 is awesome.

[@Saviliana]

I could almost hear there is a cockpit voice shouting : STALL Warning! Terrian! Woop Woop.....

[@FuelDropforthewin]

Hmmm. I wonder how it goes when combined with conventional controls? Does it become uncontrollable or highly agile? Might be worth testing.

[@jo11y_rogers-x7n]

What would be really cool as well would be a YDIB Trailmakers series

[@moroblizniak4457]

With the power of a flex wing ... I would love to see some type of a car with foldable/deployable wings tho.

[@kaylinosprey3306]

If there's a way to measure G-force you could make the controlls invert when you have negative G's, so that you don't lose control from pitching down too far.

[@JimmyCool37]

Cool concept

[@AlabamaTracers]

try adding a frunt wing that does nit moov for ballence and pitch

[@marcosacceleronhotwheels2806]

plane aerodynamics are naturally very sensitive so i see why the smallest movements on the wings still make pitch and roll, almost like a video i saw where the guy sticks his hands out the side window and that causes the plane to roll

[@semm2065]

maybe a fun idea for a build is a folding dive plane, maybe a dive bomber, it folds its wings to dive. (maybe it can even go underwater)

[@NEPTHRUST]

Hey man I think you should make a centrifuge launcher think that is used to launch rockets into space

[@mr.meowington8346]

Keep up the great content, you are still my favorite youtuber after 2 years. :)

[@bestpenguin4711]

What about if you push a wing with a piston?Will it also effect everything?

[@martyman2193]

Yeah. I made a swing wing Raquel fighter once with this idea in mind. It’s odd, but it half works for the idea

[@kosmickitten_au4550]

This plane was an awesome concept. would love to see a bird style plane.

[@floriandiem1223]

He has done an ornithopter before, wasn't exactly a bird but more like a dragonfly but close enough ig

[@martyman2193]

I could try that

[@martyman2193]

If you want me too

[@Poldovico]

To demonstrate the power of the Flex Wing, you should saw a plane in half.

[@reubenvickerson1279]

What an interesting concept, what if you made a weight that flung the plane into the air, like a catapult, instead of the plane manually taking off.

[@vale.44peru]

You might wanna put more vertical fins on the back, when you were rolling the nose was still pointing in the wrong direction, which was mainly caused by a lack of yaw rather than roll

[@renesans3045]

If you wants it to bend more maybe you can try adding second pair of wings. They would be able to offset angle change by staing static or even bending opposite a little bit.

[@markbrown2206]

How about trying to build a glider car? That is a car, with no visible wings, that pop out to convert it into a fully controlled glider (no air power). For bonus points, make the transformation automatic based on an altitude sensor.

[@nguyencaocuong9388]

Phisicsssss turn wing=pitch and up

[@Zytharr03]

Next idea: make a plane that flaps it's wings like a bird

[@Charun1982]

How about a plane controlled by adjusting the center of mass next? Have some sort of weight system that will move with the controls and all the wings etc. are static.

[@chris993361]

I think you should do it again, but this time adjusting the dihedral of the wings instead of front to back or maybe a mix of the two.

[@cooperbelknap2269]

Put guns on the wacky plane design, so that you can use them to do a multiplayer plane battle.

[@gg2023]

This plane made me think of an idea that might be cool, Like a person whose different limbs move different ways to give flight control and thats abot it. It wold basically be something like iron man bt the whole body wold be all wings

[@goldenandesite]

Hook it to some angle sensors to make it self leveling.

[@11---------]

This design has bested scrapman.

[@Col3by]

I made a plane last night that uses that for take-off / landing, when I saw the title I got nervous lol

[@archerfiend4802]

Flying sea serpent

[@Frounin1596]

i finally saw scrapman put his wings in the middle not the front

[@jeffreyblack666]

I don't think it is the wind, I think it is the weight of the plane. Your pitch control relies upon you changing the centre of lift vs the centre of gravity. But as you change your pitch, while you don't change where the centre of gravity is, you do change the direction of it relative to the plane, so eventually it doesn't provide the torque required to rotate the plane.

[@hereforthetrailmix6038]

Finally I’ve made it into the top 15 of a comment section

[@parteichawngthu6365]

They should make hankbuster

[@JeremyWertheimerScience]

@ScrapMan Love your uploads and you even got me playing Trailmakers. The planes you make that have wings as tailfins provide lift in the rear. This is going to make your planes unstable and prone to twitchy pitch controls. Try using tailfins instead of wings. and pitching them slightly down. Real planes have negative lift in the rear. This pitches the nose up and helps maintain stability, especially in nose down stalls. Here's more info: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJiZfJari7GYZsk

[@Late_night_cook]

Great landing

[@PyroRaptor1]

Great video Scrapman!

[@Reth_Hard]

Make a bird flap his wings! While flying, if possible... :P

[@alchgaming4672]

When youre angle becomes negative the youre controls have to do to. So when in pit hes down out of contros press down button and it Will climb just like you were inverterad. Lovet youre videos

[@Franktamas]

Did Scrapman forget about using Jaw or was I just missing that?

[@brettschickert4794]

I think a good name is the Wiggle Wing

[@farisbensaoud2179]

Am I the only one who wanted to see him fold both wings like he had to with the roll so it can make the wingspan shorter

[@adhdrenalin4392]

Idk how this works in trailmakers, but real planes actually generate down force rather than lift on the elevator. Judging from how your plane flew I think it could be better if you added some more weight up front and turned the wings on the elevator upside down. This would move the center of gravity further forward, thus increasing the natural stabilizing tendencies of the tail so it would become more controllable in extreme attitudes.

[@xiphido]

HI! BILLY MAYS HERE WITH ANOTHER FANTASTIC PRODUCT BROUGHT TO YOU BY SCRAPMAN! IT'S THE AMAZING FLEX-A-PLANE! 🤣

[@beeware8865]

Suggestion, build the Piasecki PA 97, it's basically four h34 helicopters attached to a blimp.

[@Wolfydubz]

You should make another circle wing but in the other orientation

[@nekowknight]

I'd call that plane "the flailer" because it's flailing it's wings all over the place to fly and if it gets out of hand it results in a fail

[@bonkaiblue7906]

#buildidea #suggestion , The vehicle in a animated movie called "Storks" (2016) made by the female lead, and used in film, multiple angles in first few minutes of it's reveal.

[@MrSurf35]

Might work as a bi-plane, where one wing is lift and the other is roll.

[@ashercortez3237]

Bird style wings next!!!!!

[@davidpaulik9877]

crazy idea here : do somethink like this in main assambly the game was alive when you uploaded videos from it

[@tomjohnson8099]

Reminds me of how birds raise their wings above their head in flight

[@SirPhoenixTheDon]

Makes me wonder. Make a spiral cone shape. Like a Christmas tree. Where the wings bend but also spiral up to a point. Put a helicopter engine on them and see if that'll create lift. 🤔