Phil's glider


There seems to be a lot of electric gliders about that don't thermal well, I suspect this is because a lot of flyers use them like power planes. I have an electric Highlight that thermals well but being light it does not like the wind, this is the reason for building a larger electric glider. One model I do like is the John Emms fillip 600, good balance of power and thermalling ability and nice to fly. My model was built from odd bits, I was given the Charisma centre wing section by Dave East, it needed a repair, Meredith gave me the wing tips and V tail from his Starlight, the fuselage from came from Ebay and cost me £25, the motor came from the Blackbushe air show bring 'n' buy.
wingspan 3.1 metres length 1.4 metres servos 6 x HS82MGs prop 10 X 6 folding battery 2500ma Lipo speed controller 40A £5 Ebay cheapy RX GWS 8 channel construction hollow molded wings and epoxy glass fuselage from Kevin Beale
	The Axi 2829/10 1200KV just fits in, the wires nearly touching the revolving case. The motor draws 22 amps from a 3 cell 2500 lipo using a 10 x 6 folding prop gives an input power of about 250 watts. This gives the model about 10 climbs to thermalling height, no ventilation is need with these short motor runs, I did 3 consecutive climbs and used the brakes to descend and the motor stayed cool and the battery only slightly warm. An increase in prop size and some tough lipos could increase the power to 450 watts

Building The only hard bit in putting this model together was fitting the V tail, to make the V in the fuz I fitted a broom handle inside with a V cut out, then put the male part of a V on the outside warmed it with hairdryer and screwed the two together forming a V in the round fuz. Balsa push rods work the tail, servo tray is under the wing. 6 servos are too much for most BECs so I used some AA nimh to power the servos and RX
Setting up the wing and tail incidence was done by eye and the C of G by guess work, it flies with no trim so I can not be far out. Radio set up This needs the full mixing, elevator to trailing edge, ailerons to flaps, flaps to ailerons, ailerons to rudder, thermalling flaps on the side slider, launch flaps on a switch and crow braking on the start switch. This is very easy on a Futaba FF9 as it is preprogramed and just needs the amounts dialing in. Some people have put the crow on the throttle stick and used a side trim lever for the throttle. The Crow braking is set up with 60 degrees of down flap, 15 degrees of up aileron with a little down elevator.
Flying No surprises, the climb was rather slow with a power of only 60 watts per pound, as it wont be used in competitions this will not matter. It is a bit heavy but when thermalling you need to get the weight of the model out of your head and remember that it will go up if it is in lift. It flies about the same as most F3J models, transition between thermals is good and it will go up wind in a stiff breeze, helped by a little extra weight. Landing is easy with the crow braking switched in, if I remember that the crow is not on the throttle stick.

Launch and fly by on Minchinhampton common

All Spare Parts Self Launching Glider

Gloucester Model Flying Club