Classic Gliders from the 70s - 80s

[rubberduck]

Hi,
i am Juergen from Bonn, Germany. I build sailplane from the beginning of the 70s. In this time i had such great planes like the graupner amigo, wik salto, multiplex alpha, airtronics sagitta900, and now i could buy a original "bird of time" from dynaflite (1980-1985). :rolleyes:
All this sailplanes are alive and in a very good condition.
But i think, more and more there is no one who remember them.
And in a few years, they are forgotten. There will be no original plan, to build them onesmore. And no one will remember Tim Renaud or Dave Thornburg and their historic constructions. :eek: :eek: :eek:

So i would like to create a thread, "Classic Gliders from the 70s - 80s" for friends of classic thermal gliders.

Question:
Is there anyone who has the origiginal plan of the "bird of time" from dynaflite (from the 80s) ??? :confused:



greetings ... juergen from bonn, germany
email: jwin95@web.de

[ferincr]

Hi Juergen,
What is the plane in the lower picture.
I love that wing.
Fernando

[chlee]

Check out this thread:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150339

[BMatthews]

Rubberduck, that's a Hobie Hawk. One of the very first successful ARF gliders.

Juergen, the Bird of Time plans are still available from Radio Control Modeler along with a reprint of the original construction article by Dave Thornburg himself. The same magazine offers plans for many of the old classics that later became kits. The Saggita is one of them as well as the Windfree and many others.

Go to http://www.rcmmagazine.com/e/env/0001qkr7m8QMD6Y45I4E0a4/index.html?link=/store/rcm-store.html and click on Plans > Category > Sailplanes. All the links have pics of the models. Get ready to spend a good couple of hours making up an order.... :D The only other magazine that still has a great older selection available is Flying Models but their online catelog does not have many pictures and is terrible to navigate. But no loss. RCM has always been the best for RC gliders from that era.

[rubberduck]

upps, sorry i forget ...
the pictures in my first posting are the paragon and the hobbie hawk.
Both wonderful airplanes. I still have only a paragon, searching for a hobbie hawk (but thats not easy ...) :confused:

here are two pictures of my sagitta 900 and the bird of time (both original from airtronics and dynaflite. :)

[BMatthews]

Juergen, if that last one is a Bird of Time then it's a highly modified one. I think you may have your pictures mixed up. The wings, stab and fin are all the wrong shape other than the fact the wing has the Wolf style trailing edge bulge. The fuselage doesn't match either. I think this is some other design.

[xtc]

ok,heres my classic sagitta 900

xtc

[rubberduck]

Juergen, if that last one is a Bird of Time then it's a highly modified one. I think you may have your pictures mixed up. The wings, stab and fin are all the wrong shape other than the fact the wing has the Wolf style trailing edge bulge. The fuselage doesn't match either. I think this is some other design. :confused:

Hi Bruce,
mmhhh...you may be right. I thought it was the bird, because i got no original plan. I got it from an other glider-pilot. So i will look for a original plan ... best i will buy it in the us, from rcmodellers magazine. ;)

Here in Germany we have a lot of copies, and the most of them have a lot of changes.

greetings, :confused: juergen (bonn)

[SoCalGliderFlyr]

Somewhere I have a set of Dave's original BoT plans. Hand drawn before it was submitted to RCM. Also Blaine's Mirage plans.

[BMatthews]

SoCal, those hand drawns will be worth big money one day. Sort of like a Michelangelo charcoal sketch! Certainly much the same art content..... or are we a little biased? :D

Jeurgen, here's a pic of my BoT. You can see that while the model you have the pic of is pretty and has the details and general look there's a lot of differences.

While I'm at it here's a couple of other classic designs. The RO8 and the Windfreak.

The RO8 was Richard Odle's eighth glider design... go figure eh? Mine was built from a kit by some happily forggoten company that had absolutely the WORST wood of all time. I ended up modifying much of the design details to make it work with the wood I had available. Later when describing what I did and what I replaced they asked what I DID use from the kit. After some consideration I said "the trailing edge wood was the only stuff worth keeping". But the outlines and general construction are failthful.

The last shot is the Windfreak. It was published by a Roger something or other. This model is a buddy's and it flew very nicely. Good towing manners and fairly easy flying charactaristics. And it's a looker in the air and on the ground. Rudder and elevator only made for some hairy landings if you got it going fast. Just did not want to slow down. Span is 100 inches. RCM has the plans for this one too. A curve building bed made from a ceiling tile and some plywood forms is used to make the wing like you see it. I seem to remember him saying that a colorful swearing vocabulary made the curved sheeting go more tolerably.... :D

[rubberduck]

hello,
i wondered. In the US you have very lot of nice balsa-gliders available.
I like them, because here in germany the sell mostly GFK/CFK-Kits, F3B or F3J. The good old balsa constructions are more and more lost and no reseller will sell them any longer. The same problems whe have with books or plans.

Only in the us you have a market of companies which sell clever constructed balsa kits. (skybench, house of balsa ...).

When i want order a glider-kit from this shops in the US, mostly i get the answer "Ships to: United States, Canada only" ... :confused: :( :mad:

Why? I dont understand ...
I didnt buy a sidewinder-rocket or a machine gun ???? Only a balsa-glider-kit ...

Puuuh, i thought we are living in 2005, working in global companies, using internet and voice over ip ... :confused: :confused: :confused:

Does anyone have an idea how to get glider-kits, books or plans to germany?
or could help sometimes ...

greetings
jürgen, Bonn (Germany)

[ferincr]

Jurgen,
I live in Costa Rica and to get things shipped here I use a courier company that you have to suscribe to and they give you a physical address in Miami to get things shipped to and then they bring the stuff here.
I guess you can get something like that in Germany. Now get ready for shipping costs! and customs duties!!!
Fer

[MTT]

Juergen, I can help you there.
I am a german, living in Cincinnati, Ohio.

If you are interested contact me at mtt@cinci.rr.com or mtt@mkrusa.com

Michael

[SoCalGliderFlyr]

For those that want as close as possible plans to the original drawings get the plans from RCM. Not much difference between the two. I would loose the secondary bell crank for the stabilator and go with the direct L crank design even if you have to move the stabilator down a bit. Also use larger diameter wires on the stabilator and brass tubes.

The blue lines I have of Dave's original drawings (I also have the original typed instructions) are well faded and cut in sections. Guess I should reconstitute these and make a couple of Xerox copies. I also have a hand full of the original hardened wing wires Dave used in the first run of his kits. The redesign of the wing into three sections has orphaned these wires.

Sorry about the growing trouble in getting plans and kits from the US to Germany. Guess the EU wasn't such a good idea.

[MTT]

Sorry about the growing trouble in getting plans and kits from the US to Germany. Guess the EU wasn't such a good idea.

Doesn't have anything to do with the EU....
More with most of the US suppliers unwillingness to do something out of the ordinary.

I have sent packages to Europe on more than one occasion, and it's no big deal at all.
As a matter of fact, the much ridiculed US Postal Service does a pretty good job on this, 4-10 days delivery time ( none of my packages has taken more than 7 ) at a lot less than what FEDEX or UPS charge.

Michael

[SoCalGliderFlyr]

Has nothing to do with how you ship and everything to do with the growing regressive VAT system being imposed on imports by the EU.

I've sent packages to Germany also and just labled them "gifts" to get past this. However if you are recognized as a retailer you will get hit with VAT.

[MTT]

SoCal, you're somewhat misinformed there...
It is correct that VAT will have to be paid...
But it is not paid by the retailer, but by the recipient !
When a package comes in form outside the EU, it will be held at customs, and the recipient has to pay the VAT based on the declared value of the shipment, in order to get it released.

It doesn't affect the retailer here in the US ( or elsewhere outside the EU ) at all.
All he has to do is get it shipped.

Michael

[SoCalGliderFlyr]

You can try to side step the issue if you want. The added cost to the purchaser, wither tacked on here or there, effectively kills any sales an exporter to the EU tries to make.

Regressive taxes are regressive taxes.

[rubberduck]

oohhh,
sorry for this discussion (socal, mtt) ;-)
i had to read first in the internet what VAT is before i understand something in your posting. May be right that the EU has also a system which is "growing regressive" ...
By the way, i am not governor of a commercial system. Only a simple customer which tries to buy something.
But, i wondered ... i have colleagues in big us-software companies in redmond and seattle. If the send me something i get it in few days (very quick), without any problems. mmmmhhh ???????????
O.K. the tax for an import i have to pay. Private parcels (gifts or somehing else) are tax free. There i payed the tax to the shop in the us.
My god, a balsa-kit is not a car or a ship full of consumer-electronic.

May be, that our presidents come together onetime to understand that we are all normal unpolitical people which only want to live in freedom with their familys and their hobbies. buuuhhh ...i dont like any systems like this (VAT, EU ...) i like to fly my sailplanes

jürgen, bonn

[MTT]

SoCal, it is you who is sidestepping the issue...
The issue wasn't wether it was commercially sensible to for a US supplier to sell to the EU or not.
If you go back to post #11, you will see that Juergen's question was why US suppliers would not ship to the US.
If he ( the customer) has to pay VAT or customs duties or whatever, isn't any of the retailers concern.
For the retailer, it doesn't make any difference if he has to ship from IL to CA or from IL to Germany, as long as he gets his money back.
It's up to the customer to decide if he want's to cover all that added expense.

Michael

[allanp]

If you want an original BOT and plans why not contact Thornburg ? Last I heard he had a few original kits left. Someone in the club here in Orlando just called the number in the front of Thornburg's book and found out about the kits
Allan

[SoCalGliderFlyr]

Where did you hear that? The last BoT kit Dave had was given back to him. He then sold it on eBay for big bucks. As to plans; Dave sold the rights to RCM.

[rubberduck]

Hello,
thanks for help. Now i understand some problems by ordering rc-products from the us. The shops in the us mostly have not a problem with the 16 percent tax (because that pays the customer in germany), they hav some problems by shipping and transport. :rolleyes:

When the parcels are bigger then normal (max 60x30x30) the had to pay a lot of dollars to the parcelservice, so that makes rc-gliders from the us too expensive. :eek:

I think they see the low price that german resellers pay for gliders from poland or czechoslowakia. As a sample, the sierra 2.5m from arthobby.pl (arthobby.com) produced in Poland costs only 150 Euro / 145 Dollar. And ordering and shipping from poland or cz now is very very easy. (they learned very quick to make money - in the east ...) :D

Now i found a german reseller which sells a "bird of time" in balsa or ARF.
It is produced in cz. www.lenger.de "Vogel 3000" (vogel means bird). :confused: The quality of the glider-kit is not so good !!! And it is modified, no original bird.

O.K. but i think it is a interessting discussion for me and for you in the us. ;)

;-))

Jürgen, Bonn (Germany)

[rubberduck]

here is a picture of a modified sailplane named vogel-3000 (bird of time 118")
... mmmhhh ... :confused:

i think you will see it. dave thornburg would be "not amused" about this creation ... or what do you think ??? OK its a joke :rolleyes:



so thats why i try to get my plans from us and build an original BOT. :D



juergen, bonn

[ejett]

Juergen:

That plane is being imported into the US. AJ (see posts above) had two of them before he built his BoT.

Like the Dynaflite BoT ARF, the Bird 3000 (as it is known here) has a weak wing construction and most of them die on the winch.

I would think you could order plans from RC Modeler magazine if you want to build an original. But, spend some time in AJ's build thread if you want to build one with a strong wing.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269207

EJ