| Eric's Foamie Glider Story
|
||
 This
is my D.A.W. Schweizer 1-26
Foamie HLG after only a a couple of flights. Notice it's still very clean looking
and sports a balloon cut in half on it's nose to protect the Micafilm covering. This
picture was taken after about 50 hand launches and one or two slope launches.
|
Dave, of Dave's Aircraftworks, the
inventor of this glider says these foam gliders are tough and perfect for beginners
(though this model isn't designed for beginners) but I wasn't a complete believer in
this until the very first morning when I started throwing this thing up in the air.
I was more than a little nervous because I've wanted to learn to fly RC gliders for 18
years now.
When I was 12, I bought a Robbe 2 channel, 2 meter glider which I got about a dozen short hi-start flights, and one five minute soaring flight out of, before destroying the glider. It was just too heavy, flew too fast and was too vulnerable to fences (I spent far more time setting up the hi-start than I did flying). So 18 years later someone recommended a "foamie" to me and I bought this hand launch one so that I could fool around with it in my backyard.
|
|
So there I was with high hopes after finishing this glider in a little park with a baseball diamond and a number of tall aluminum light poles. After about an hour of short but safe flights (maybe 15 seconds each), I sadly misjudged the whereabouts of one of the poles and flew the wing (the one you can see best in the picture) right into the light pole which was probably 6 inches wide. It impacted the wing about 3 inches from the fuselage with such a loud whacking sound that I thought for sure my glider was finished. It then swung around the pole into a tree with more ugly sounds. I retrieved the glider thinking I had just closed the book on my chances of ever learning to fly RC gliders. I discovered to my joy than there was no indentation in the leading edge and only a few wrinkles in the film to remind me to avoid large solid objects while flying. Since then, I've crashed my S 1-26 just about every time I've flown it and the worst damage I've done is to strip a servo. |
||
|
Almost forgot that the tip of one wing ripped off at the leading edge once (about an inch of foam), but I just put a little goop on the foam and stuck it back on.Of course the Micafilm is getting raggedy and I've since stopped trying to keep any film on the nose. By now you're probably thinking you've heard a lot about crashing and not much about flying. Does it fly well? Just take a look at the pictures, it flies beautifully and it only weighs 16.5 ounces. According to Dave, this makes it light enough to thermal from a hand launch without the aid of a slope. I think that might be more feasible in California where Dave lives, but in Kentucky where I built this or in Guatemala where I fly now, I think it would be a very rare occurrence to find such a vigorous thermal. Then again, it could be that I haven't developed the necessary skill yet or maybe that I don't know enough about fine-tuning my glider's center of gravity and decalage angle. Anyway, on a slope, this glider is miraculous. I've soared it on hills as small as 12-15 feet in height, thermaled it into the clouds on larger hills and flown in winds gusting over 35 miles an hour. Dave, thanks for inventing the foamie - you're a genius!! Thanks to you, I've finally learned to fly RC gliders. I'm getting better at thermaling and think about doing a loop. Soon, I may even learn how to land. In the meantime, crash landing is still too easy an alternative <G>.
|
|
|
