Flex wing glider

Here's everything you need to know about flexies, courtesy of ASTRE and the NAR continuum of competition article writers over the years.

-John

Gary wrote:

Rember that the NARTREK levels have to be done in sequence, so you must complete Bronze before Silver, which has the glider requirement. And although I have a dozen or more fixed gliders, I still have not assembled my one QCR flex-wing kit. You will receive 3 or 4 glider designs with your Silver packet materials. Also, is there a flex wing design on the NAR website? The competition section now has designs for most of the common competition events. I know they have about 4 different helirocs, so there should be some flexies as well.

George Scheil NARTREK Base

Gary wrote:

I didn't know plans came with the Silver package; is one a flex wing?. Obviously, I am still doing the Bronze package but I've already built models for everything else, except the glider.

They don't have any flex wing plans at the NAR competition plans site, though there is a section for them.

I actually built a fixed spar glider yesterday off the info John DeMar provided (thanks, John!). It glides fairly well. In my living room. Apparently, the laws of physics are completely different in my backyard. ;) I can already see that this is going to be the hardest part of the NARTREK series for me.

Alas, most NARTREKers are not that ambitious, so we include only fixed wing gliders in the packet. I did recently get the old archives from the 80's, when Base was selling cheap plans from a huge list of models. I can search for flexies, but it may be a slow process. The plans are not organized in any way.

George W. Scheil

Gary wrote:

Don't confuse ambition with a summer off from teaching. :)

Please, don't spend extra time on this unless there is additional interest. The lack of general info tells me flex wings are not a real popular glider design.

I am searching the RMR archives (years 91 - 97) from ibiblio.org for glider and flexwing stuff right now, but, unfortunately, those archives do not appear to have been made with a USENET archive utility; they expand into a single concatenated file, not a heirarchy.

Thanks for the concern and info.

It seems to me there's some coverage of flex-wings in the Astre newsletters. You could try looking there.

Al Rognlie NAR 71223 Sr WOOSH, NIRA and Washington Aerospace

I got your original post, John, thanks!

This is a whole new world for me. My Dad built a couple gliders (Estes Falcon, maybe?) when I was young, but I was never interested in them. Now I'm learning all kinds of cool new terms like "dihedral" and "death dive". I'm also having to learn something called "patience"; it has something to do with getting a flexwing to glide correctly.

Will do, George. Thank you.

Actually, I have had no problem getting my flexies to fly at least well enough - after I read the instructions from the link above. There's really only one magic trick, and once you have that, there's really not a lot else to know.

I take *far* less time trimming flexies than regular gliders, since they are much more tolerant of being off a little bit, and even off, they have far more performance than you could ever possibly need. It's really pretty easy to get them close. Perfect, that's another story, but perfect is not necessary. It's so light that even completely unstable glides can still get hooked up.

Brett

There's some Flexie info including GG's triming instructions in the RMR FAQ part 8 "Gliders" which can be found at

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

I haven't been doing much with gliders in a while but I was really "into it" at one time. I brought a couple of old contest gliders to a launch a couple months ago. They worked pretty well the last time I launched them but they had all sorts of problems this time. I could either blame the balsa for warping and detuning, or blame myself for being rusty. ;) One squirrely boost and one "red baron" (pod hangs up on the glider).

Flexies are VERY easy to loose when they work well. A piece of plastic film likes wind or thermals! I've lost one hand-tossing it. Tuning a flexie isn't too difficult but it's kind of an art that's hard to explain. Figuring it out is part of the fun, I suppose. :)

Now you've got me fired up to try some gliders again this weekend.

-John DeMar NAR #52094

One of my flexie pet peeves: put a well trimmed one in a small thermal, and it flies away. Put an untrimmed flexie in a small thermal, and it flutters like a leaf falling from a tree. And performs just as well as the one that glides!

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

I found your FAQ early on, Bob. Thanks.

George's trim method supplements the one in the Chedar-1 R&D report, it seems to me.

This gets more and more interesting. Wish I wasn't twenty years behind the curve. :(

I found the FAQ version you made early on. I like the formatting on the above link and would like to use that one as a reference. Do you anticipate it being a fairly "permanent" address?

I found the FAQ version you made early on. I like the formatting on the above link and would like to use that one as a reference. Do you anticipate it being a fairly "permanent" address?

I found your FAQ early on, Bob. Thanks.

George's trim method supplements the one in the Chedar-1 R&D report, it seems to me.

This gets more and more interesting. Wish I wasn't twenty years behind the curve. :(

I have a few day's experience with one (fixed spar) flexie. It "floats"

across my living room like a champ. Tossed outside and it is a collection

of sticks and plastic. I "think" there is insufficient billow in the wing.

At least, there is no stability whatsoever. I don't yet have a feel for how loose the wing material should be. I just found the R&D report that talks about billow and stability tonight (thanks, shockie!). I'll re-do the wing tomorrow if I have time and see how it works.

What is the one magic trick?

RE: multiple posts.

Sorry, the news server said the transmissions had failed.