Thread: Glider Building
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Old 07-30-2018, 11:46 PM
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MarkB. MarkB. is offline
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Default Glider Building

Conrades:

I though I'd share a picture of my glider program during the building stage. As mentioned elsewhere, I am trying to build something to qualify for my NARTrek Silver requirement. The short version is I need a thirty-second glide, something I'm just not going to ever get from the Centuri X-24s and clones that have heretofore been the only glide-back design I had ever successfully flown.

So on the build board are Semroc Swift, Estes Firefly and scratch design based on the Firefly that I built as a kid, but like my original Firefly, was destroyed upon impact with rocky terrain. Finally, a FlyBaby, the plans for which Chas. Russell kindly posted on this forum earlier this year is also in pieces on the board. The engine pods are built and painted, the only deviation on those was that I covered the front of the Swift engine hook (the white one) with a piece of cardstock.

The scratch design, on the cradle, was the surviving wing from my childhood which was painted red, probably with Testors Flat Red at some point. New tail feathers, colored with yellow highlighter and most importantly, a spruce fuse that should allow at least some chance of successful flight. * It needs a little lead tape on the nose and its ready to fly, likely off my Big Bertha.

LIke the scratch glider, the Firefly clone is getting a spruce fuselage. Other than that, it's per the plans. Like all of the other gliders in the picture, everything has a coat of SIG clear dope and will be tissued. I know I don't have to tissue, but since I hadn't used dope and tissue for at least 45 years, I kinda wanted to see if I could. I have various colors of tissue so I will not be using the very pigment-heavy, colored dope.

I'm planning on starting the covering tomorrow. I'll post pictures.


* "Successful flight" at our cosmodrome is defined as the ability to refly the article immediately following recovery without repair of any kind.
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