Over the last couple of years I have built a couple of specialized
gliders for a friend of mine who's company has a yearly contest that
involves tossing a glider off a 20' platform inside a large atrium and
awarding a prize to the glider that goes the longest distance. The
atrium is ~250' X 80' and about 40' tall. No, the atrium is not open to
the public and is only usable for the glider contest as it involves
flying a straight line across the length of the atrium, anything that
circles doesn't do too well, I've tried.
The gliders I've built are based on Oldenkamp's Zweibox, I think the
lines (curves?) of this glider are aesthetically superior to most other
HLG/CLG/DLG designs I've seen. I stretch the wing to 22" but otherwise
the planform is per the original plan from MAN. The wing is 1/8" sheet
with molded in undercamber and polyhedral, the tail feathers are 1/32"
thinned at the tip to near translucency, and the fues is medium 3/32".
This results in a glider that flies the length of the atrium and
consistently hits the opposite wall at about 5'-6'.
The first year one of these gliders was flown at the contest the 2nd
place glider flew about halfway across the atrium, as I mentioned above,
my glider hit the opposite wall. The next year someone entered a glider
that made it almost all the way across the atrium, landing about 5'
short of the wall. Last year another glider hit the wall about 3' below
my most recent glider, I took this as a slap in the face and am about to
start building a new glider for this year's contest.
What I am shooting for is building a glider that will hit the opposite
wall at around 10' (25:1 glide ratio). I'm not sure if this is
possible, but I'm going to try.
I think an indoor style, built-up design is the way to go. Does anyone
have any pointers at indoor towline designs I can take a look at? Since
these gliders are suppose to be tossed rather than launched (the spirit
of the contest is such that the glider never goes above launch height)
the model only has to be sturdy enough to survive gliding, not launching.
Any ideas?
Manuel.
Received on Fri Aug 27 2010 - 10:39:58 CEST
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:46 CET