Thanks Mike,
I've made quite a few gliders over the years and I've always had good results with the Sky Dart styles. I don't go in for super performance flights, I just like to see a nice stable boost and glide. The largest bird I've built so far is a BT80 based upscale of my Goonie Sky Dart.
Both of them fly quite well. I haven't attempted the really large scale gliders, like yours, yet.
Yes and I wholeheartedly concur. The Astron SkyDart was THE thing that got me into rocketry way back in the day, and still holds a very dear place in my heart.
What I do on my 'SkyDart' styled gliders is usually make them much easier to build and trim by adding tiny amounts of nose weight instead of that screw system. Also, I like to build these things large but very light and use minimal motor. For example, I have a BT60 sized SkyDart made with cardstock and Depron, and this is still light enough to do well on an Estes C6 motor.
I like sport gliders to be large, light and fly right. This means a solid boost and glide.....not always BTC durations, but also not SRX/Tomcat/Cosmos Mariner 'fall with style' either.
That BT80 GoonyDart looks cool, and probably makes for a great launch. Im guessing youve built this 'heavy' and use E15s or the like.
Due to very bad $$$$ issues I cannot fly the large HPR stuff that I did so much 15-18yrs ago. Really miss those too. Today, its all about large and very light and making do with mimimum power to get reasonable flights. Totally anathema to my 'old ways' but even more challenging to get right.
Please post the rest of the X16 specs, such as wingspan and chord, when you can. IF you had posted this a few days ago, I would have slapped one together for this Saturdays ROCK launch.
