Odd Ball Contest winner - The Bat

[Bob H]

Has anyone else ever built one of these?

http://www.spacemodeling.org/JimZ/eirp_47.htm

I built one many years ago and when I became a BAR, I still had it.

Folded up, it will fit inside a Big Bertha and it glides remarkably well. So well, in fact, that mine glided all the way into the Amesbury swamp.

It was a slight chore to scale the plans up back then (they are 1/2 size) but now its just a couple of clicks and full size plans are printed. I have just started building a new one so I will post pictures when I get around to taking some.

Mine always glided upside down from the picture shown and was wondering if that was unusual or normal.

[Bob H]

Here are the parts all cut out. The wing doesn't show very well in the picture but it's made from authentic PM-2 parachute material which is actually silver.

[stefanj]

Mine always glided upside down from the picture shown and was wondering if that was unusual or normal.

Bats and upside down just seem to go together.

[mycrofte]

Here is a full scale PDF I made from the picture. The only thing I had to scale off of was the 1/8" holes. So, if anyone finds something wrong, let me know.

[Bob H]

Well this has been built for a while but I'm just getting the pictures out of my camera, :o

First picture is the folded Bat, ready to load into the body tube of the launch vehicle.

Second picture is it opened up in glide mode.

Both of these pictures were taken before the rubber was added. This one glides right side up.

Our next launch is the middle of July so I hope to try it then. It will fit inside a Big Bertha so I will use that or somethig of similar size.

[Jeff Walther]

Our next launch is the middle of July so I hope to try it then. It will fit inside a Big Bertha so I will use that or somethig of similar size.

Did you fly it? How did it go?

[Bob H]

Did you fly it? How did it go?I managed to break it the morning of the launch by dropping something on it. I glued it back together but didn't bring it with me because it was raining when I left my house.

It cleared up later in the day and turned out to be a good glider day with relatively light winds.

I'll have another chance to try it at our August 1st launch.

[Bob H]

I attempted to fly the Bat at our August 1st launch and it was less than successful.

It had glided nice from a hand toss but spiralled in on the first attempt. Hand tosses after that seemed to point that it was nose heavy.

I added some weight to the tail and got another nice glide from a hand toss so I tried it again. This time it failed to eject from the tube and tangled the chute of the booster but wasn't damaged in the hard landing.

I loaded it up one more time and it spiralled in again. This time when I retrieved it, I gave it another toss and it stalled like it was tail heavy.

The first one I built years ago had a little slack in the wing when full open. This one opens up and the para-wing is tight and the side pieces don't go fully to the stops so it seems to inconsistent when fully open.

The answer seems to be to make a new para-wing that is slightly larger and see if that fixes the problem.