On Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 2:08:10 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Fri, 15 Nov 2019 18:39:32 -0800 (PST), Its Me
wrote:

On Friday, November 15, 2019 at 8:21:55 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Fri, 15 Nov 2019 16:05:11 -0800 (PST), Its Me
wrote:

On Friday, November 15, 2019 at 5:56:20 PM UTC-5, Bill wrote:
Its Me wrote:
On Friday, November 15, 2019 at 2:06:32 PM UTC-5, wrote:
I thought this was kind of cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3MgvIdvydM

Yep, I used to not like RC gliders that much, but I've come to appreciate
them. It's a little but different skillset to flying them compared to a
powered airplane. They were slope flying... the wind coming off the
ocean and hitting that hill creates upward lift. As long as the wind
doesn't quit, a decent pilot can fly until the batteries run out. Other
glider pilots without a hill have to be towed up by one of several means
(winch, huge, long rubber band, etc.) or an onboard motor to get them to
altitude, then they glide slowly back down unless they can catch a
thermal, and then they can ride that back up.

I have, new in the box, a rocket powered glider kit. It uses a solid
propellant rocket motor to boost up, then you glide it back down. I
bought it but never got the itch to build and fly it. Maybe when I retire.


As a kid I took. A couple years on and off to build a balsa wood strut
glider. About 6’ wingspan. Would never glide. No matter what I changed.
Talked to guy a few years ago, whose dad owned a hobby shop. Mentioned the
glider and said, nobody ever got one to fly.

Heh. I wouldn't doubt it. Gliders are the most sensitive airplanes to build and fly. They have to be perfectly straight and true, and then have to be balanced just right (side-to-side and fore-aft), and then trimmed (up/down elevator and left/right rudder) just right. It can be a challenge for an experienced modeller. An
then
if it's a hand launched glider and not RC, the hand toss itself can greatly affect the flight.

The ones I made didn't seem so tough but sometimes a paper clip helped

https://tinyurl.com/rt2df7p

LOL! Yes, but 6 feet of "gliding" is a whole different thing than actually gliding for hundreds or several thousands of feet.

I understand. I was just screwing with you. The only guy I knew who
actually did that stuff (an IBM guy) called his sport soaring.
It was all about being in a place with lots of thermals and having a
plane with ridiculous wings the way I understood it. Out West was
best. I never actually was around it but I did see one of the planes
somewhere out there (Dakotas maybe but it could have been Idaho).
The guy looked like a frigate bird the way he was working the air. We
watched him for 20 minutes and he never seemed to really lose any
altitude. My wife said I had to go. ;-)

Years ago when I was messing around with high power rockets, I saw a small boost glider kit that caught my eye. The rocket was about 12" tall, and there was a glider that was maybe 10" long with a wingspan of 6-8" that rode up on the side of the rocket. It was setup so that when the ejection charge went off at the top of the boost, the rocket deployed a streamer and tumbled back down, but the glider detached and glided back down. I built it and set the glider up for a nice, flat glide with a slow turn to the right.

We had a launch once a month at a sod farm. It was a flat field of grass that was over a square mile. In the morning I flew it with a small "A" motor. Perfect flight, slow lazy 20 foot circles back down. A couple of hours later, I put a "B" motor in it and flew it again. Another perfect flight, but after a minute or two it became apparent that the glider wasn't descending. The glider was circling and with a slight breeze it was moving downwind slowly across the field, but it was gaining altitude. The sun had warmed the field and we had thermals. We watched with binoculars over the next few minutes as it doubled its altitude and became a tiny dot in the distance, then disappeared. I'm guessing that once it crossed the tree line it lost the thermals and started descending, but it would have finally come down a couple of miles away in the woods. Heh, oh well.