I concur. Trimmed my Zoomie clone till it glided nicely on hand tosses. First flight it did a u turn off the launch rod. Don't know if I'm going to continue working on it or make it a permanent shelf queen.Haha been doing the same thing lately.
One thing I've noticed is that "non-traditional"-shaped gliders (like tailless deltas, flying wings like your Sparrow, and canards) can trim out perfect with hand tosses but fly lousy when launched, or trim out mediocre but glide spectacular after being launched. Haven't figured out what that's all about, but I guess it's true that the real trimming and fine tuning takes place after several shakedown flights.
I concur. Trimmed my Zoomie clone till it glided nicely on hand tosses. First flight it did a u turn off the launch rod. Don't know if I'm going to continue working on it or make it a permanent shelf queen.
So, as of right now, I consider the model to have decent glide performance.
But glide performance also varies greatly, depending on how much I "push" the Sparrow when I do a glide test. I feel that I am at a point where I need to do a rocket launch, and see how the model responds.
I am not sure of the glide variations are due to my construction, or due to variations in the wind.
Everything looks even and aligned. If not wind variation, one wing could be quite a bit heavier than the other. I did a scratch-build where one wing was more than twice as heavy as the other even though I cut both out of the same piece of balsa. I later noticed after I glued everything together that the right wing had a denser, harder balsa vein running through it. Had a heck of a time trying to fix that annoying right pitch and turn.
Here is a look at the top of the right wing. Note the sanding on the trailing edge.
View attachment 372672
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