luke strawwalker
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Thanks Jeff. I did try that on my first orbiter but I probably just used too little clay. It was about as big as a pencil eraser or less. Now that I've got a field near the house I can fly in (for the next few months at least) I'll bring a hunk of clay one afternoon and launch it over and over and try to slowly build up until it works.
That is, assuming the flame fins don't break again. I'll bring both sets to be sure. Heck, I guess I could bring both complete stacks and a helper and fly one stack while the other one is loaded. Rapid fire shuttles!!
Sounds like a plan...
You COULD add a small "trim tab" of tape or something on the tip of one of the elevons (left is standard practice IIRC to get a left hand turn), just a piece of tape slightly upturned to generate a little more correction on one side than the other... shouldn't take much. It shouldn't interfere much if at all with powered flight, though it might induce a slight spin or spiral to the flight after launch.
Generally speaking though, adding a little weight to one wingtip is how I've always read about it being done...
Course, these little gliders have two things working against them-- 1) they don't have a great glide ratio anyway (glide distance to sink rate ratio) due to their small wing area, small size, cross-sectional area and shape, and weight... and 2) the short wing span makes mass at the wingtip less effective in turning the glider, because the mass has less leverage since it's closer to the glider's CG than it would we way out on a more "standard" glider's wingtip (one with longer wings)... (IOW, weight at the end of a longer wing exerts "more leverage" than the same weight closer in). Adding substantial weight is not really what you want to do with these gliders anyway, as it will rapidly diminish performance... keep the mass as small as possible to do the job...
That's why I suggested a small trim tab of tape... it's low-mass, and it could perhaps be used in conjunction with a bit of wingtip mass to optimize for both...
Later! OL JR