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The International "Design, Build, Fly" competition between various colleges and their radio-controlled aircraft was in town this past weekend. I had some time to talk with an engineer from Swift who was working with the USC team, and who I know from AIAA meetings.
I can confirm from him about Honda's engine preference, but also that Swift isn't entirely sure on things since they don't have a concrete engine spec from the ICS. We also talked about wake turbulence, the "Mushroom Buster" (at least one of the Swift engineers plays Mario Kart), and L/D aero efficiency.
This individual mentioned in particular that he thought Road America, with its high-speed corners, would be the perfect playground for the "Mushroom Buster" to show its stuff. Of course, as I mentioned, and we both had a laugh, ICS doesn't run at Elkhart Lake. According to this engineer, the Atlantic chassis seems to have about the best L/D of any recent open-wheeler (~4.0:1). And we had another chuckle about the "Mushroom Buster" and wake turbulence, because a number of the newer road courses, that aren't designed for bike and club racing, set-up overtaking based on long straights into very slow corners. Now the outbraking part can still work, but if you have nil wake turbulence, you also have a weak slipstream down the straights, which doesn't help you get tucked up behind the guy in front going into that slow corner.
We also made some jokes about the other chassis submissions, and just had a good time, whenever he wasn't tied up back with the USC team, who spent a fair amount of time disassembling their plane to try and find the culprit behind some yaw, roll, and balance issues; they were wondering whether the batteries were perhaps moving around a bit.
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