Vale Gliders
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Span : 60"
Wing section : AG04
Root : 200mm
Tip : 110mm
Weight : 13ozs
Wing loading : 4.8ozs sq ft
Length : 960mm
Ballast : no
The build is going a bit slow, been at this stage for around one year, really want a discus launch glider but cant seem to finish it off. Wing servo's and horns are fitted, just need to install rudder and elevator servo's and connect them to the pushrod wires, charge up a battery and go fly it. Pathetic isn't it?
04/04/07
Tis done. Bit heavier than I was hoping for, but guess it will be ok for a first DLG. There is a few ounces to be saved in the next build, possibly a smaller diameter tail boom, a better thought out stab mount and maybe some slightly lighter tail feathers, but think most of my weight saving will be in the wing, its 1.7 oz kevlar cloth with a 3oz uni carbon fabric spar, it seems strong, maybe too strong, as with some studying, most people use 1oz kevlar with this style of wing. Will try an xp wing style layup next time, with a uni-carbon leading edge instead of a spar. If its a nice day tomorrow, will give it a few chucks and see if I can get it to fly.
Easter fling
Thursday evening- time for a test flight, very light winds but decided I would be happier setting it up on the slope, more time in the air to get the flaps and spoilerons sorted out and with suitable elevator compensation, not to mention tuning the C of G. Not an ideal slope to do all this on, North Easterlies being the only direction I am not to happy with on my local slopes, there is 10ft of humpy bumpy landing zone before a barbed wire fence, several bushes and a fairly gentle slope that only generates moderate lift, but I just had to fly regardless. Fly it did, but not even enough lift to keep a HLG up when sink came through, but after several landings down the hill aways, caught some better air and the Flitter was up to a dot, so had a mess about with some loops and rolls on the way back down. It can fly surprisingly fast for a lightweight glider, rolls great but not to good at looping, I put this down to a lack of energy over the top, just not carrying enough weight. On one fast pass my peripheral vision let me down and I flew straight into a bush, that was a bit stupid, and took a while to extract it from the bushes thorny grasp, but no damage, tough little blighter! Time to set up those spoilerons now I have the c of g how I want it, got them working well on fly bys, better try the real thing, nice gentle landing, managing to miss the fence and the bushes. However the rudder caught on the grass and broke the control linkage. Taped up the rudder and tried again, next landing was just slightly heavier, the shock broke the elevator linkage, not impressed.
Good Friday-repairs first, wrapped the broken linkages with kevlar thread before cyano-ing them back together, its the joint where the thin wires exit the ptfe tubes and I haved joined on some thicker wire to go into the control horn, not having any shrink sleeving with enough shrinkyness I had just cyanoed the two wires together, obviously not strong enough. Went up the school playing field in the afternoon for some gentle launching, felt very weird for the first few throws, and was concerned that I would break it. Soon had my confidence up though and even managed to chase a few thermals down wind, no massive gains in height but impressed non the less. I was never able to catch a thermal with my previous plane, javelin launching never got me higher than about 40ft, just didn't have the arm for it, so as soon as I had launched it was time to set up for landing, the potential for discus launching and catching thermals looked good. Managed to hand catch my plane a few times, but using spoilerons seemed to mess me up (previous javelin launch plane was rudder elevator), guess I will need to practice. The fun was brought to an end when on a bit of a greaser landing the whole fin broke away from the tail boom. Every days flying seems to incur some repair time on the bench, need to look at some other planes of this type, how do they build them strong and light, I am already nearly 50% heavier than some of the commercial offerings.
Saterday-drove up to a field near Hockliffe for an F3K training day. Perfect conditions and a great bunch of people made for a very enjoyable day. After watching for a while and being very impressed with launch height and also everyone's ability to catch thermals, took my peg and had a go myself for about 3/4 hour. By late morning a few more people had arived, and as one tall chap walked onto the flying field with his plane, I was advised to pay particular attention to his launches, ey carumba. Well over twice as high as my feeble attempts, I had studied launch tecnique on dvd, but you don't really get a sense of how high the planes get thrown, much higher than I had imagined possible, very impressed, Richard was no slouch at thermaling either, specking out on a regular baisis. Lorry coaxed me back onto the flying field for some launch tuition, (had met him the previous week on one of my local slopes, and after some fun flying and a little impromptu slope limbo found out he was a national F3K competitor, he recommended I pull my finger out and finish my dlg then get myself along to this very event, cheers Lorry) and together with Mike, another top class launcher, lots of advice was gathered on how to improve my launch height, then I lost the fin again on a bit of a gnarly landing, having given just about every plane there a good examination, learnt that a small but very robust patch is usually applied both sides of the fin / boom join, quite often of a 3- 6oz composite material, obviously a high stress area. didnt get any more flying in, but did lots of observing. One particularly informative session was while watching Lorry fly a practice ladder session where each flight in an 8 minute period has to be at least 1 second longer, having spoilerons, using them and setting up my radio to use them was covered, need to do some repairs and get practicing. Thanks to the organizers of the event, and also everyone I talked to, a welcoming crowd with lots of advice to share, I would recommend going along to one of their events if you are at all interested in dlg.
Sunday-had some good flying on the local school field this afternoon, perfect conditions with no breakages made for a very pleasant session. Began practicing the launching tips I had been given yesterday, pretty sure the plane is launching 10-15ft higher already, just by concentrating on technique and not forcing it, managed lots of catches too as I am beginning to get used to the spoilerons and my new radio set up. Caught several thermals and speced out a couple of times, so satisfying to do that from a hand launch, having a ploughed field nearby may have helped though. Began to notice lots of lift where I could maybe sustain height but not get away, guess my 13 oz plane in light air could have something to do with that, thoughts turn to making a sub 11oz version, hmmm. A brilliantly satisfying day overall.
Easter Monday-Enticed a mate up the field to do some video for me, wanted to see how my launch looks, definitely recommend this to improve your launch, learnt from windsurfing a long time ago that when you think you are bending your knees, to everyone else they look fairly straight. Getting some video footage lets you see what you are really doing, and instantly learnt my launches look a little lethargic. First I had to remind my mate how the camera worked, got a little carried away and forgot to switch the plane on before launching, an extreme structural integrity check followed, after pulling the nose out of the dirt and giving it a thorough check over, was amazed to discover no damage! Another great day for thermalling.
Flitter 1 Mpeg-4 7.13mb
This site was last updated 04/25/07