About Mia RC Microlights

Control Types:

Indirect (Simple)
Direct (Complex)
Weight-Shift
Wing Warping
Reflex Variable Geometry
Elevon Mix
Thrust Vectored
Conventional 3-Axis

Wing Designs:

Rogallo Delta
High Aspect
Rigid
Semi-Rigid
Flex
King Post Cabled
Topless Struted

Trike Designs:

Bolt-On (All Kit Designs)
All Wood Frame
All Aluminum Frame
All Carbon Plate Frame
Composite Blend Frame
Carbon-Aluminum Blend
With G10 Bracing Plates
With 3D Printed Plates
Tubular Tube
Square Tube
Hexagonal Tube
Single Plate Frame
Dual Plate Frame
Carbon Rod Frame
Steel Rod Frame

The experimental and recreational flying fad of the 70’s, when young daredevils took to the skies in ultralight homebrewed aircraft, called hang-gliders, and my affinity for unique lightweight aircraft, inspired my passion for these interesting and unique flying machines.

In the late 70’s, I embarked on a quest to find one in scale that could be flown via radio control, but I could not find one for purchase. The closest thing I found was a publication of a 1:6 scale Rogallo “ Delta kite style wing” hang glider model, made to fly with a modified GI-Joe toy figure, using 2 servos on the torso, for weight-shift control.

American Modeler Magazine, April 1974, as bought at the time from a local hobby shop in Chicago. Circa early 80's.

American Modeler Magazine, April 1974 "Flexi-Flier" Article Plan

American Modeler Magazine, April 1974 "Flexi-Flier" Article Photos

This publication was in an American Aircraft Modeler- April 1974 magazine, which I found in a local hobby shop’s “old magazine rack”, after having, literally, gone through all the magazines there, and purchasing many of them that looked interesting, while trying to find anything related to the subject.

The hobby radio transmitters of the time did not have mixing or programmability and thus the radio, used with this model, had to be physically turned at 45 degrees so to obtain a pseudo form of mechanical elevon mixing, on the Aileron/Elevator stick, to operate the model with some control.

After building the model from the magazine’s article, plan and photos, and trying several times to get the model to fly to my expectations, I gave up on it.

Several things contributed to these unsuccessful attempts. The control was poor, to begin with, and the model required a hill to be tossed from. One had to toss the model down hill and had to run down the hill to fetch the model and climb back up the hill to start the whole process again and again. This was very exhausting.

RC Hanglider Rogallo Delta Wing built in the early 80's

RC Hanglider Rogallo Delta Wing Framework built in the early 80's

In addition, the model suffered from lack of durability, being manufactured from hobby grade thin aluminum telescopic tubing, spruce, and a bunch of bits and pieces, as the plan called for. And although the cabling and rigging was made to resemble, in scale, parts on the real hang gliders of the time, it was simply too many small parts that either became loose, bent or broke, during use of the model.

Landings were not graceful, every time the model landed hard, while the rather heavy GI-Joe figurine pilot legs cushioned most of the shock, the wing structure would bend easily on impact. The sail, however, made for a nice kite material and I used it, as such, on breezy days, after rebuilding the framework a few times. Photos show the wing, in present day, as I kept it since the last time I rebuilt it, nearly 40 years ago. Note the, once shiny, brass nose plates have tarnished over the years.

RC Hanglider Rogallo Delta Wing Nose Detail built in the early 80's

It is at this time, that I decided I would design my own and to my own specifications, while using a more modern wing design and better materials than what was called for on the Rogallo kite plan.

I designed and built several high aspect ratio wing prototypes, to test the wings. For simplicity, these were made from thin plastic sheets, and were rigged also with a king-post and cabling, but less complex, as I wanted to keep my designs simple and more importantly flyable and durable. At least until I got the design fine tuned.

Later on, my wing designs got more complex and were done in fully sewn Ripstop Nylon and Dacron with the addition of rib pockets for battens to provide a more efficient airfoil flex wing.

I also employed electric propulsion, so the model could be flown as a modern-day microlight, with a complete trike and sit down pilot figure which was also designed to control the model via the control bar.

MIA RC Microlight
Specifications:

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Lightweight

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Durable

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Flyable

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Easy to Manufacture

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Easy to Assemble

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Easy to Transport

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Use Electric Power

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Use Inexpensive RC Gear

Since that time, I have designed dozens of RC Microlights, in all types of configurations, with various forms of control, including but not limited to rigid, semi-rid and flex wings, with weight-shift and wing-warping via “Indirect and Direct Control”.

I refined some of my early designs to be sold as RC Microlight Kits, when I established MIA Micro-FLIGHT, back in 1999, basically the same time I started selling the world’s first RC micro helicopters, also in kit form.

MIA Ulra Light-Weight Late 90's RC Microlight

My original direction was to provide an uncomplicated RC Microlight “Trike” kit that could take advantage of the technology available at the time and be simple to assemble and fly. This meant cutting a lot of complexity, of my original designs, and making the trike and wing as light-weight and simple, as possible. This meant that any in-scale design I had done had to be reserved for "not for every day use" or "not for the typical hobby enthusiast", since the parts in such were more expensive and much more complex to construct, and setup, and not as durable as one that was designed with full RC Flying intent, without the worry of high maintenance or repair.

The answer was the MIA Condor™, also known as MIA Angelis™ as seen in the attached early video which was posted on You Tube in much later years than when the model was designed, built, and flown.

MIA Condor RC Microlight
Specifications:

Wing Span: 54"
Wing Chord: 11"
Flying Weight: 6.4 Oz.
Propulsion: GWS IPS DC Motor/ESC
Battery: Ni-Cad 8-Cell 110 mAh
Channels: 3-CH

This particular early RC Microlight, because of is simple design, was unbeatable in terms of power to weight ratio and suprisingly operated on just 8 small Ni-Cad battery cells with a capacity of 110mah on a GWS indoor power system motor with respective DC brushed motor speed control.

At the time, I showed this model in my web site and via various internet rc forums such as RC Groups, RC Universe and others and in later years I opted to place a video of it in my You Tube channel.

It was not meant to be a full in-scale model, like my early 80's 8ft trike or the MIA Trek inspired trike for simplicity and for ease of making it work with the technology available at the time and keeping the cost of the kit attractive while giving the user an introductory option to RC microlights.

RC_MICROLIGHT_TRIKE_ULTRALIGHT_MIA_ROTO_TRIKE_VINTAGE_1

RC_MICROLIGHT_TRIKE_ULTRALIGHT_MIA_ROTO_TRIKE_VINTAGE_2

This early bird, used a flex-wing loose sail with king-post, landing and flying wires, “luff-lines”, reflex and washout. Because of the similar control function “Weight-shift”, control link setup, as used on rc and full-scale autogyros and the way I designed the control block mechanism, at the top of the mast, this lended itself to a 2 in 1 model, by simply exchanging the “lifting surface” the “fixed wing”, in the case of the microlight, and the “rotary wing”, in the case of the autogyro.

I’ve always been in favor of the KIS (Keep It Simple) rule, especially when I started selling kits. This has advantages from many points.

A king-post and cables on the early scale model hang gliders, microlights, ultralights, was something that I wanted to do without, because of the extra complexity in manufacturing, setup and maintenance. Not only extra parts, that protrude on the wing, rob performance efficiency, but can be also distracting and annoying, when traveling with the aircraft or storing it. A full-scale or model wing with a king-post and cabling requires a higher ceiling for storage and transport, wether it be in a real aircraft hangar or inside a car, respectively, unless it is completely disassembled.

MIA EZ™ 1.25 Trike RC Microlight with Strut Braced LG

MIA EZ™ 1.25 Trike RC Microlight with Single Piece LG

In addition, a floppy wing, as in Rogallo type wannabe RC Microlight wings, do not make an efficient wing, and this bothered me of the early delta type wings, in general. An even though my early first wing of the early 80's was a high aspect ratio wing, it did have a kingpost and upper and lower lines to support the wing, aerodynamically. I wanted not only an efficient, stable, clean wing design, but also one which would be able to recover quickly from a hard dive "safely" and have a reliable degree of control envelope through any type of maneuver. Thus the MIA EZ™ line of RC Microlight wings with SafetySprog™ wing tip washout was born. This feature, amongst other trademark features, such as the MIA Robo™ Pilot, MIA TUFF™ Select Hardware, and some custom pocketing, stiching and proprietary airfoil forming battens, to this day, still hold solid on MIA RC Microlights and other similar MIA products and their effect and performance can be clearly appreciated in the countless videos of such, posted online since 1999. MIA RC Microlights not only fly great but hold tight turns with no degredation in control a a result of all these MIA innovative trademark features.

MIA Robo™ Trike RC Microlight with Strut Braced LG

MIA Robo™ Trike RC Microlight with Single Piece LG

Because of this frame of mind,I also opted to streamline my wing designs on all my kits with “strut-braced topless” wings, removing all the complexity associated with the older style wing design approach, and making them just like on modern-day full-scale high performance hang gliders and microlights, but with the added bonus of employing own additional custom parts, we include in every kit, to make them work even better at the RC model scale level.

In addition, I've gone further and simplified some of my original trike landing gear designs so that the latest "standard kits", I produce, are easier to assemble, and maintain, while providing the same or better suspension and protection on hard landings, as on my original designs.

MIA's early RC pilot figure of the 80’s was designed with the intent to fully control the rc microlight or any other similar RC aircraft. In similar fashion to the Flexi-Flier GI-Joe modified pilot figure, but with added articulation control of the limbs.

On full-scale microlights, the pilot controls the microlight via the control bar attached to the wing. This requires complex flexibility, rigidity and precision handled by the human anatomy, articulation in the joints.

To mimic this, in scale form, with precision, and simplicity required considerable thought and a bit of ingenuity. I have probably burned thousands of brain cells, in this area, alone.

I designed various configurations in order to have something tangible that I could study the mechanics and feasibility, ease of manufacturing in kit form, etc., while I tested and refined the designs in my rc microlight models.

Some worked better than others on some models, and some required a bit more complex geometry to obtain a more realistic form of control.

One of my greatest accomplishments, in the area of the RC Microlight, has been the development of a robotic pilot figure which can steer the model, just like a real pilot steers a real microlight, via his hands attached to the control bar. Similar to the typical 2 servos on the figurine’s torso, that was used to control the Flexi Flier, for simplicity in servo count, but with additional geometry and components imbedded into the design of the pilot body structure, so to yield a more fluid and realistic form of control, via the pilot figure hands attached to the control bar. I call this “Direct Control”.

I employed this more elaborate form of control on the MIA Robo™ Trike RC microlight kits, as well as other microlight and hang glider designs of various sizes. I offer the full mechanical RC Microlight MIA Robo™ Pilot Figure, “Direct Control”, as part of the MIA Robo™ Trike Kits and as a "custom stand alone option" to match the particular scale of the trikes and wings we offer.

For example, the original MIA Robo™ Trikes use a Pilot with 2 servos with Enhanced Body Geometry, while the most recent "Larger" MIA Robo™ RC Microlights use a Pilot with Multiple servos and much more Complex Body Geometry, although I designed these pilots to look rather simple, especially when they are fully covered with a flight suit.

The following photos show the MIA Robo™ Pilots in their natural form, whcih I think adds a bit of interest and uniqueness to the models they control.

Today’s MIA RC Microlights have become very sophisticated in design and features. Propulsion and battery energy systems, have evolved tremendously over the years and present-day technology has opened up the room for much more realism and performance, something that was very challenging to obtain in the past with older technology.

MIA’s latest RC Microlight designs employ high performance brushless (BL) motors and metal gear servos for power and control and the result of this combination can be seen in the awesome flight characteristics of every single one of MIA’s RC Microlights and flying products, in general.

As an added bonus, MIA RC Microlights, as all MIA products are designed for durability as well as longevity. Compare this to a foamy or balsa rc model aircraft, there is simply no comparison with an ultralight rip-stop nylon sail wing and a bolt on carbon-aluminum frame as employed in MIA model aircraft kits.

RC Microlight History