When I was flying F/F competitively, I was a follower of the Stoy brothers, Stan and Mike. I flew their Wasp built up outdoor glider, and Coot indoor glider. They had a pretty extensive article published for each. The Wasp was a pretty conventional design, just used a built up wing in an effort to keep it light. They were competing and published the design at a time similar to today, where good balsa was hard to find due to the super tanker situation and oil crisis. I did pretty well with those and still have a few bits and pieces of my last ones laying around some where. My biggest problem with them was keeping Sean from sneaking them out to fly! He loved to throw them and would do that all day long, but I could never get him to build his own! He is a member of the Mountain Men club out in Colorado Springs these days and is well into tip launch and catapult glider. If I ever get my act together I have a few kits of some simple tip launch models for myself.
The Coot was a whole different story! It was one of the first flexible wing gliders that had "flaps" that flexed flat on launch, and as the glider lost speed, they flexed back into position for the glide. Wood weight and grain was critical. The wing started out as 1/8" thick wood and you carved it into the airfoil shape once you cut it to the outline. Properly done, the wing was about 1/16" thick near the leading edge, and just aft of the high point of the air foil, it tapered to .010" or .015" at the trailing edge. Tail surfaces were that thin also and you could read a news paper through the balsa! It was VERY difficult to trim for launch and transition. It was supposed to be thrown straight up, and at the top just curl over to a flat glide. I never got one to work exactly like that, but was a mixture of the straight up launch and a roll out t the left. I forget what the Cat.1 record was at that time but I got to where I could consistently get 30 to 33 second flights. Sean and I entered a local paper airplane contest one at a local community college , which I won the duration portion , and then got out my Coots to get in a little practice. I walked to the far end of the gym in order to be out of the way pf the rest of the contest And after checking trim, put up a good toss. It caught everyone's eye and the whole gym came to a stop! Except for Sean and myself, no one had ever seen anything like it! There was a Post -Dispatch reporter there and both of us were part of an article and Sean got his picture on the front page in color! At a local indoor contest at the old Parks College, some one introduced me to Ken Blackburn, who had just started to work at McDonnell-Douglas and just had set a world record for paper airplanes at 17 seconds at that time and had put out a paper back book on it. We chatted a while about gliders and design and I got the distinct impression that I was supposed to be awed by his presence there. I let him toss up a few flight with a paper glider first, and he was in the 15 and 16 second range, just short of his record. I did a few trim tosses with my best Coot, and then ripped off a 32 second flight that made his eyes pop out! He asked for a closer look at the glider so I let him check it out, but would not let him throw it. I forget what the weight of a piece of paper was but a good Coot needed to weigh about 3 grams, damn hard to get them any lighter and if anyone did that was when carbon tow came into play to re-enforce wing joints and such so they could handle launch stress. I will have to convert my old ones to catapult launch some day. No way I could throw them at all now. I got to meet and know Stan Stoy when he lived here near me and was working for MAC on the Aquilla drone program, I think it was, and he was supposed to get with me some time and teach me how to master the Coot, but unfortunately, that never came about.
Another good design for kids or just for fun in general is the Lunch Box by John Oldenkamp, I think it was. Cute little booger that can be mass built and launched by a group of kids and very thermal worthy. And like the name suggests, it will fit inside a typical metal lunch box! It was in Model Airplane News back in the late 60's or early 70's. There is a website called freeflightarchive.com with a good section on F/F gliders with downloadable plans. And as Mr Trostle mentioned, the old Flying Models magazines had lots of glider designs in them back in the 50's and 60's. Just some more stuff I have to find some time for!!
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Topic: Hand Launch Gliders (Read 9848 times)