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Well Ian, after seeing how far advanced you were with your Micro Glider I thought perhaps it was time to start mine.
The 3gm Turnigy micro servos arrived weeks ago but time has been a bit precious of late so nothing had started
Today I assembled the glider as supplied, tested the glide characteristics & also measured & marked the COG.
Surprisingly COG is half way across the wing and not around 1/3 as per normal but the glider out of the box glides straight and true so that is the COG I will stick with for the build.
Cut the canopy area from the fuselage with a long exacto blade and then hollowed out the canopy and the fuselage, first with a blade (to remove the bulk of the material) and then with a sanding drum fitted to the Dremel.
The end result , so far so good.
Canopy still fits back on OK. Will probably secure with a couple of magnets
3gm Micro Servos for elevator & rudder (may add aelerons later) & the Spektrum Park Flyer Rx
Got a bit more work on the glider done today, hopefully should be finished tomorrow after sailing.
Rudder & elevator have been cut out and hinged, elevator servo & pushrod fitted & working, Rx / Tx programmed & working.
A 4 cell AAA battery pack & the servos/Rx are close to the original weight of the nose weights that have been removed. Overall, when finished the weight should be close to the original unmodified weight.
Rudder
Elevator
Elevator Servo
Tx / Rx & Batteries
A little bit more work today and the Micro Glider is ready for test flying.
Added the rudder servo & pushrod, freed up the elevators for better control, also fitted the Rx & battery pack but as the battery pack was still lighter than the original lead weights I had to add the smallest ball sinker to the nose area to correct the COG.
NOTE: Additional weight was added later to move the COG balance point to 1/3 of wing chord as opposed to 1/2 wing chord where it was by default out of the box. Bungee tow hook was also relocated (see post 4 for final build details)
Tow Hook for bungee launcher
Pushrod setup
Battery pack & Rx mounting
Magnetic Hatch Catch
Front of hatch locking pin
The finished product ready for her maiden flight.
The DX8 is a bit of an overkill as only 2 channels are needed but the Spektrum Rx was the smallest & lightest I had in stock.
With a less than ideal start to my micro gliding career and after some on site discussion with our resident Slope Soaring guru Chris (Hoppy), I am doing some minor changes to both the micro glider and the bungee launcher.
BUNGEE Mods
The bungee is now 10 metres of 6mm surgical rubber tubing with 30 meters of flouro pink Brickies line attached and it is now stored on a 10″ hand caster with built in winding handle.
This should prevent the tangles we had last Friday and make deployment & recovery of the bungee much quicker.
Bungee cord & winder
MicroGlider Mods
The Bungee tow attachment has been relocated from close to the nose (too far forward) to now back behind the COG as, according to our onsite experts, this results in a much smoother and higher launch (certainly worked with Chris’s Micro on Friday)
A small amount of dihedral has been added to the main wing (better handling) by removing the short carbon spar and replacing it with a bent piano wire rod of similar size & length. The CF rod has now been used to strengthen the tailplane (which broke on my first bad launch).
A couple of plastic icecream sticks have been hot glued to the inside of the hatch area for a bit of added strength now that most of the fuselage has been hollowed out in this area.
Once these mods were completed some additional weight (the original removed steel balls) was added close to the nose (and hot glued in) to ensure COG is still close to 1/3 from leading edge of wing.
Total flying weight is now 284gm.
Dihedral added
CF reinforcing added to tailplane
Hatch area reinforced
Finished product – Version 2
Thats All Folks
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