2 Meter sailplane?

[Nighthawk]

Hi all, i was thinking about buying a high performance 2m rudder elevator glider to participate in my local club comp, but i want one for a resonable price. This glider has got to be strictly 2 channels, Has anyone got any surgestions?

Thanking you in advance,

Nighthawk

[Ollie]

Probably the best performance for the least money in a 2-meter is the Spirit. for a little more money you can get much better quality in a Lil Bird 2, Kestrel or Soverign. Each has its strong points.

If your ultimate objective is club contest wins, the equipment selection is not the most important part of the solution. You can't purchase contest wins with equipment. The person, and there are many of them, who knows where the lift is before almost every launch can be flying anything and get his time. The person who has adjusted his model well, is intimately familiar with its flying characteristics and can guide it with precision will get the landing points. The person who practices diligently with the same model will do very well. The person who puts undue reliance on the performance of equipment will seldom be in the winners circle.

[BMatthews]

I'd really suggest a third channel for spoilers or flaps unless your local club has no landing points and there's no penalties for going over the task time.

I started out using just the basic 2 channels and learned to do a whole lot of altitude loss maneuvers but none of them was anywhere near as effective as that third spoiler channel.

If you're getting into contest flying then you'll soon learn what it means to be stuck up too high in a thermal when you need to be landing in only one minute..... Do you have any idea how hard it is to bleed off speed when you're going way too bloody fast? Or hit the spot at about 40 mph and not slide into the next field? Even with a shark's tooth under the nose?

Or worse, you left a lovely thermal early to avoid peeling the wings off in that last minute dive/drag maneuver but you misjudged and you're going to touch about 10 seconds early.....

I've done both and they both make you want to strangle yourself with your own antenna.

I agree with Ollie about knowing your equipment 100% for the struggle to stay up there. But when you take on the demands of competition then I rank some sort of drag brake right up there with the rudder in importance.

[Ollie]

Thee is no doubt about the usefulness of spoilers and, if they are well fitted and located about 60% of the chord back from the leading edge will have little effect on the wing's efficiency. Resourceful and highly skilled pilots have been able to do without them.

To illustrate my point I would like to relate a scene I observed at the 1972 SOAR Nationals. The task was six minute precision duration. Rod Smith the designer and kitter of the Windfree was nearly skied out with only about two minutes to go. A bystander asked Rod,"What are you doing so high with only two minutes to go?"

Rod replied," Selling sailplanes!" Where upon he pulled the two channel Windfree into a half loop and kept it in a shallow inverted dive until it was at landing pattern height where Rod let the Windfree roll upright. He was on the ground within seconds of the target time.

The Windfree is quite fragile by today's standards. The span is 100 inches, the airfoil is thin, the root chord is only about 7 inches and the spar caps are 1/8X1/4 spruce. Even so, Rod was able to bring it down safely and under control at a rate of around 500 feet per minute. With practise anyone with good eyesight and reflexes can learn to emulate this feat with almost any two channel glider.

BTW, Rod is Mark Smith's father and Mark was the national champion in those days.

[BMatthews]

Good story Ollie. In all my different ways of adding some drag to the flight path it never occured to me to flip it inverted.... :D

Obviously Rod wasn't too shabby a pilot either.

[Gliderguy]

My vote is for the Lil Bird 2 meter. Nicest plane I ever had. Came in a little heavy at 23oz fully loaded. The wing was one piece and built like a tank. I could full pedal winch it with a real hard zoom at the top. Easy to trim out, ranged nicely and easy to detect lift. Wind was not a problem as long as you balasted up. The wing was not as easy a build as some do to the weird Bird Of Time shaped wing but the laser cut parts were done well and fit good. I didn't feel like it really needed spoilers but maybe in a very competitive contest situation they might make a little difference.

[Tigger]

Gliderguy.

That plane is nothing but trouble. Tail feathers break everytime I play lawn darts with it. Maybe I'll have to try that inverted thing...yeah that ought to fix it for good.:p


tIgGeR

PS It's just another great plane looking for a decent pilot.

[BMatthews]

Tigger, I don't know what it shows in the plans for the Lil Bird but any glider that I've built and certainly any that I'm planning on contest flying automatically get a fiberglass layer on the fuselage to strengthen it up a lot. If it's particularly bad I'd even add some carbon cloth around the tail.

With this sort of mod I've never had any problem with lawn dart landings even on one model that has a very healthy looking T tail. And if THAT can't be broken then this is a pretty tough mod.

[Nighthawk]

These are some of the best 2m gliders