FREE MODEL GLIDER PLAN: QUEEN BEE 8" Tiny glider

This is a conventional pod and boom design with V dihedral. A notable feature is the use of natural carbon fibre for the boom. Natural carbon fibre? Yes, I mean kebab skewers! These can be bought for peanuts (satay sauce?) from a supermarket or online for less than 2 pence each. Search through a pack and you may find a decent number that are straight, stiff and suitable for building with. Any hard outer skin on the cane should be positioned underneath the boom. The wonky ones can be used for, you guessed it, kebabs! Of course, if you cannot find real bamboo, please do feel free to substitute with carbon fibre instead.

For ease of construction, the wing has a straight high point. In the normal HLG manner, after the wing has been shaped, finished and cut, the ends are bevelled and glued into the correct V dihedral setting. A matching V is sanded carefully into the fuselage top - I make a tool for that using a coffee stirrer, balsa and Al-ox paper. Use epoxy for the dihedral joint and wing-fuselage junction. After the wing has set on the fuselage, you can cyano thread to the LE. It may act as a turbulator, but even if not, it protects the LE. I could not detect a change in performance after adding it. That said, if you leave the LE bare with no thread and it receives a bang or dent, then you can sponge it out with a tiny bit of water. It is really up to you.

The QUEEN BEE plan shows the original dayglow yellow and black stripe colour scheme. Finish in the same way as DOGEAR in the previous blogpost.

For some previous notes about flying this model click here. My "still air times" (as described in the DOGEAR blogpost) for QUEEN BEE were in the range ~28-30s.

FREE MODEL GLIDER PLAN: DOGEAR 6" Tiny glider

This is DOGEAR, a development of DOGCHEW (see previous blog post, again, just click and save the plan). DOGEAR differs mainly in the wing design. The planform is elliptical at the front with a basswood leading edge (or use lime wood which is also genus Tilia). Trailing edge is mostly straight with single taper near the tips. The wing is also thicker, 2.5mm (~5%) compared with the 1.6mm of DOGCHEW. By feel, I carefully sand a small "Phillips entry" under the LE, but the rest of the underside is flat. It is a typical HLG aerofoil. The wing is assembled as a straightforward three panel structure using epoxy at the breaks - the tips are raised by 15mm from the flat centre.

The three panel wing and the fact that dogs appear to find my models "tasty" were the reasons for the name DOGEAR.

Fuselage is laminated using pva (e.g. Titebond II). The thin glue layer increases stiffness and strength a great deal. A lighter way is to use spots of cyano. Alternatively, forget about the laminating completely and use hard 1/8 balsa instead. Please do feel free to experiment with nose length. In other words, cut it shorter if you wish. The size shown on the plan seemed work well in calmish conditions. I use epoxy for the wing fuselage joint and throw tab. Fin and stab should be sanded as thin as you dare, so that you can breathe and bend for trim.

My finish is the traditional 2 coats of thinned down sanding sealer with very fine Al-ox paper between coats. I finish the wing with sanding sealer before it is cut into three panels and the stab and fin before they are glued to the fuselage. A splash of dayglow colouring helps enormously for visibility. Apply Al-ox paper grips on the fuselage sides. In the photo below, you can see some inked stripes that also help to see the plane against the sky (er, I mean clouds, cos that's wot we av ere most in England).
By my reckoning, DOGEAR will stay up for about 5s longer than DOGCHEW in "still" air; by that I mean in very calm conditions outdoors early morning or late evening. I recorded consistent times of ~22-24s for DOGEAR in such conditions (I am sure a lighter version would do better).

FREE MODEL GLIDER PLAN: DOGCHEW 6" Tiny glider

The Small Flying Arts site has changed dramatically. I think they are in the process of transferring all the plans and articles over to the newly designed site. However, the plan and build notes for my DOGCHEW design are currently unavailable there. So I thought I'd publish them here. In future blogposts, I'll also publish some other tiny glider plans. Click and save the plan below. The build notes, which I wrote in 2006, are shown in full below the plan.

Build notes for DOGCHEW 6" glider

These notes accompany the plan for a simple 6" span free flight HLG. Small gliders do not have much momentum so tend not to break easily. Another advantage is that they can float on a whisper of lift. You get maximum fun with minimum fuss!

Now this is the first 6" glider of mine to fly over 30 seconds. When I was testing the prototype in a local park, there was nothing for me to do but laugh while I watched a "friendly" Dobermann Pinscher pick it up tenderly with its jaws, manouvre it about and then crunch it, very gently. I said to the dog-owner: "Well, I guess it looks a bit like a stick." He replied, "You’ll be needing a bit of glue then. A pity, cos it flew really well." I thought "yeah FLEW." At least the dog seemed to enjoy the flavour of dope on balsa. I spent the lonely walk home carefully spying the ground for other deeds by my new best mate Dobie….

That is why this design is called DOGCHEW. Its best flight so far is about 63 seconds and still air time around 18 seconds. In the 2006 Tiny Gliders postal contest (see http://www.windandwavemodels.com), average flight time was about 32 seconds.

It is a straightforward build. The plan is to scale, so you may find it easiest to use a photocopier or scanner to enlarge or reduce it in accordance with the fuselage dimensions.

Instead of laminating the fuse with PVA, you can use spots of CA – this is lighter. Alternatively, forget about the laminating completely and use hard 1/8 balsa instead. The wing is made in the usual HLG way. Make a template from the plan. Use it to cut out the whole wing planform, sand in the airfoil with the high point as per the dotted line and apply 2 coats of sanding sealer. Then cut the wing in half, sand the dihedral angle at the root chord and glue together with epoxy. Sand a “v” in the fuse for a wing seat and use epoxy here and for the throw tab. Fin and stab should be sanded as thin as you dare, so that you can breathe and bend for trim. (The prototype had trim tabs, but these were dropped in the final design because they were easy to break). Apply sandpaper or similar for grips on the side of the fuselage.

Feel free to play around with the length of the nose – e.g. chop it shorter if you like. The length shown on the plan seems to work well in calm conditions. Also, you may find it beneficial to sand a bit of washout under the starboard wing tip TE.

Using gentle glides from the shoulder, trim for a left turn, with a slightly “stally” glide. Full power throws are to the right of the wind with a slight right bank. As with most HLGs, avoid throwing with less than full power! Add left rudder if it stalls in the glide, but not too much otherwise it will spiral dive. When properly trimmed, it should transition at the top quickly and start turning nice flat left circles.

Thermal in peace….. :)

Berkshire, U.K., 2006