I have been building other miscellaneous rocket glider designs, and I had forgotten how GOOD the Dynasoar kits are.
I was looking at the 24mm Aurora (at Dynasoar Rocketry), and noticed it had the same overall dimensions (33" length, 24" wingspan) as the 18mm Aurora.
But the 18mm Aurora is a couple of ounces lighter. What is the difference between the two Auroras?
The answer is: 2.5mm instead of 3mm spars, 1/2 ounce cone instead of 1 oz heavier cone. Lighter loaded motor weight. That's it.
The History of the clipper is:
I used to do it as the Stratodart, same wing, but mid mounted requiring slotting of the body tube, PS-II tubing and cone.
Changed it to low wing with dihedral for simplicity, same wing as Stratodart also used 2" estes PS-II tubing with cone which weighed around 11.5 oz rtf
Then I switched to BT-80 tubing and PNC-80K cone which lowered the cost slightly and the weight to 10.5 oz rtf
When usps changed shipping rates in April 2022 I needed to shorten the wing chord so it would fit into 20" long boxes. By shortening the chord 2" it changed the CG requirement so I switched it to shorter BT-60 tubing and nose cone to avoid being nose heavy. It cut the rtf weight to 8.5 oz for effectively almost the same wing area, and I did not need any nose weight for balance.
I used to do a mini Aurora Clipper with BT-60 tubing and the same lightweight cone you have which went pretty high on the D2.3t but wing area was small and glide was about a minute, by converting the new kit to the lightweight cone and lighter spars because there was less stress on the airframe, it allowed it to still fly on the D2.3 but much slower and more forgiving and due to the larger wing area still glide about a minute. It also meant only one set of templates for me to use. This also managed to balance perfectly without any nose weight.
Looks good, pinstripes always make a lady look slimmer
