My parts arrived today. Somehow the thing seems bigger than I was expecting. I'd like to bring it in under a pound dry mass, and the body tube and balsa NC are already about half that (I used BT-80H for robustness.)
I was thinking Readiboard for the wings. Is that a stupid idea? I probably won't fly it on anything larger than an F22J.
Readiboard will be PERFECT for the wings of this craft if you do not go over the F22J or perhaps the F25.
I have flown many, many gliders built with this stuff on mid F impulse at this size and larger. If you have the 24/40 can, you can use the F24 loads with a 2429 adaptor. Also called 'practice flyin'....
One note on using single plyed Readiboard....warpage. Try to get a FRESH sheet from the BACK of the case. It will still have the tendency to warp along the LONG side regardless. This is not bad.....if you use this on the span side of the wing planform, you get 'free' elliptical dihedral, and that helps especially if yours will be free flight. You may have to splice another small section in front since the sheet will only be 20" chord when cut in this manner.
Please resist the temptation to 'glass' or otherwise 'cover' the wing. OK, if you can iron-on Monokote that is fine, but otherwise, just save the weight. You can do something else though:
Take some 1/8" dowelling and add this to the leading edges of the wings and then tape over this with like 1/2" wide strips of chrome tape or similar. Bingo, leading edge protection and a bit of drag reduction since those edges are now 'roundy'. Also, it stiffens the wing a bit -and that never hurts, plus helps keep warpage down.
Instead of gluing the wings on each side of the body, as Autonomy 1 had, you can just make the entire Readiboard delta planform and crease it down the middle for dihedral and then glue this to the underside of the BT. That also resists warpage. Of course, try to have some dihedral if you do this, bend up the tips at least one half the BT diameter.
You can see Chris Michellsons fantastic blog (hcmbanjo on here) and see a very similar simplified glider of mine called the Astron EconoGlider under the Tampa TTRA launch post. You may just want to build that instead! :fly: