Maiden'ed my GL today

[ljasmann]

I built up a GL from a kit that I bought on Ebay for $22. Heck the covering cost me more than the kit! With the help of a couple of friends, one with a hi-start I got it up for three short flights today. WX was not condusive for thermals, and after the third flight, the wind picked up so we were done for the day.

The CG was about right.. perhaps a tad nose heavy, but that is OK for now. This is my first glider, although I have been practicing with a friends GL for about half of the summer. It needed very little trim adjustment and seemed to track nice and straight.

There is a particular joy in spending a couple of months of evenings building a kit and then seeing it fly well.

The plane is just about stock.. Only mod I made was to put a carbon fiber rod on the main beam on each side sandwitched with balsa to make the wing a bit stronger for the winch.

Should be a lot of fun in next summer's thermals!

Larry

[rogerflies]

You get thermals all year 'round. Even in MD.
See: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=949509

Congrats on the successful build and maiden flight!!

Roger

[ljasmann]

Biggest problem around here this time of year is the wind.. which gets much more persistent. The field I fly from has a lot of tall trees around.. and when the wind is blowing strong .. at least at my level of experience, I am really focused on ensuring that I am not blown into the trees.

The good thing is that the plane was very easy to control and to keep essentially over the field.

I get more adventuresome when I go up higher on the winch, and when the wind is less..

larry

[ozmo01]

Congrats!
GLs are great birds. Not so much fun in the wind. You can add balast and that will let it fly in a little more wind. But it really was designed for low wind thermalling. You might consider a second wing though with a diferent airfoil.
Much different all around performance or so I read here. Spoilers in the second wing could be fun! RES is popular these days. :D

[Lost_Dawg]

I built my GL bone stock because I didn't know much about the power of winches at the time. I now belong to a club and the guys have taught me how to launch my GL with the winch but I'm uncomfortable every time I do it. I think you made a real good choice when you beefed up your wing.

There is indeed a lot of satisfaction to be had from building your own plane and seeing it fly well. It's the kind of thrill you just don't get tired of. My Gentle Lady flew well right from the start. I have had a 45 thermal flight with it along with a whole lot of much shorter flights too. This has been my first season of glider flying and is my second season of RC flying. Isn't it great that you can have so much fun flying a simple, graceful glider with so little money invested? Good luck!

[lincoln]

I have launched a GL on a winch many times. If you know how to tap, it's easy. If you don't know how to tap, turn up the volume on your tv, grab your tx, a can of tuna, and a broomstick, and hide in the basement. Put something heavy in front of the basement door and stay away from the windows. Make sure the area in front of you is clear. Put the tuna on the floor about 6" in front of your favorite foot. Hold the broomstick in one hand and the tx in the other. Start tapping, very short taps about twice per second. Very quickly, throw the broomstick, hard, straight, and level, to the other side of the room, but don't stop tapping. Now, grab your tx, but keep tapping. And pretend you are steering the glider with the rudder to keep it straight. After 10 seconds or so, stop tapping, put in down elevator for half a second, pull up a little, then give one more tap. (last is optional if your winch has a brake, but it's a good habit) After 5 or 10 minutes, you will have more practice tapping than most guys at your field and you should have acquired some expertise. Now, if you want to, you can throw the carbon away. The last step is to come up with a cover story.

ltjasman:

Where exactly did you put the carbon? What I imagine when I read your description is a way that you can put the carbon on without adding any strength. However, if you added the rod to both the top and bottom of the spar, it might be ok. Middle of the sides won't do much for you at all.

I once had a Gentle Lady fuse with an E205 wing on it. Flew great. Much better in wind. But loading rocks, pennies, etc. in fuse also helps, if you keep the cg in the same place.

I think the GL is a nice glider. However, I think it would be much nicer in a 100 inch version with top and bottom spars with shear web. Maybe even a real Clark Y... but that would make it just a tad harder to fly, I guess.

[cn0rris]

The Gentle Lady is such a great plane. I still have the one I learned to fly with 22 years ago, and it's still airworthy. I just flew it a few weeks ago. I have two daughters now, and soon they'll get a chance to fly it too.

[ljasmann]

I have launched a GL on a winch many times. If you know how to tap, it's easy. If you don't know how to tap, turn up the volume on your tv, grab your tx, a can of tuna, and a broomstick, and hide in the basement. Put something heavy in front of the basement door and stay away from the windows. Make sure the area in front of you is clear. Put the tuna on the floor about 6" in front of your favorite foot. Hold the broomstick in one hand and the tx in the other. Start tapping, very short taps about twice per second. Very quickly, throw the broomstick, hard, straight, and level, to the other side of the room, but don't stop tapping. Now, grab your tx, but keep tapping. And pretend you are steering the glider with the rudder to keep it straight. After 10 seconds or so, stop tapping, put in down elevator for half a second, pull up a little, then give one more tap. (last is optional if your winch has a brake, but it's a good habit) After 5 or 10 minutes, you will have more practice tapping than most guys at your field and you should have acquired some expertise. Now, if you want to, you can throw the carbon away. The last step is to come up with a cover story.

ltjasman:

Where exactly did you put the carbon? What I imagine when I read your description is a way that you can put the carbon on without adding any strength. However, if you added the rod to both the top and bottom of the spar, it might be ok. Middle of the sides won't do much for you at all.

I once had a Gentle Lady fuse with an E205 wing on it. Flew great. Much better in wind. But loading rocks, pennies, etc. in fuse also helps, if you keep the cg in the same place.

I think the GL is a nice glider. However, I think it would be much nicer in a 100 inch version with top and bottom spars with shear web. Maybe even a real Clark Y... but that would make it just a tad harder to fly, I guess.

Geez, that is a heck of a way to get good at tapping the winch pedal! My approach is to get someone else in the club who has handled the winch a 1000 times to tap and launch the glider while I concentrate on flying the thing. Only real excitement I had earlier in the summer (with a borrowed GL) was that the glider came off the launch ring when it was about 30 feet in the air at the beginning of the launch. Scared the bejesus out of me, particularly with a borrowed plane! It looped around and landed in a bush behind us with no damage!

The instructions for the GL call for using an additional piece of 3/16 balsa glued on the top of the main beam in each side of the wing out to the 5th rib (I think) to increase the main beam strength if desired. Instead of doing that, I used a 1/16 in. flat carbon rod, and then put a 1/8 balsa strip on top of that. Sort of like home grown plywood with a carbon core. All together, the beam, the carbon and the balsa cap just comes up to the top of the rib contour and so did not disrupt the surface of the wing.

Larry

[enrico74ec]

IMHO, the gentle lady is one of the greatest gliders around. I saw my first one 20 years ago, built my first one 16 years ago. So far i have had 4.
#1 diminished after 10 years in a friends hands, #2 is somewhere in my dads storage, #3 i still have it, needs somelovingand gettingit back together and my #4 is 3 years old and still in pretty great shape!

The GL will teach the novice pretty much the basics, but i've seen seasoned flyers have a blast with it on somerelaxing flying. This past saturday Itook my almost 5 year old son flying (hellbe 5 in december anyway .. ) got the lady upthere with a short field upstart and let him "fly it" down by himself. When ever he got into trouble all i had to do is tell him to let go thesticks and she would start flying again on its own (please dont take me wrong, we are talking at least 3 mistakes high) when it got too low, i would "help him out with the landing" Makes for a very happy kid !!

thermals

Enrico

[ljasmann]

I agree that it is a very forgiving plane. Earlier this summer when I was just getting started, my instructor basically did the same thing to me.

"if it isn't cooperating, just let go of the stick and let it sort itself out". In about 30 seconds it would be flying stable and I could take over again and go back to hunting thermals.

Landings are easy if you just remember that you need to keep the nose down a bit so it will maintain some forward speed to provide control. Just lower the nose very slightly and it will go exactly where you want it to go.

Larry

[Lost_Dawg]

Lincoln:

Thanks for the winch pedal practice routine! LOL! I'm going to give it a try. Believe it or not I have tried practicing my timing on the pedal at home. I'm getting better but was having a hard time keeping the pedal and all coordinated. Just ain't got no rhythm I guess. Yeah, I know, can't walk and chew gum either! Anyway, I decided to start right out using my left foot on the pedal, plane in right hand and TX in left hand. It just makes sense to me that if you lead with your left foot when throwing a ball then you want to lead with your left when launching your plane to help maintain your balance. I've gotten quite a bit better but I haven't got to where I can walk up to that pedal and launch without fear and butterflies yet.

[lincoln]

You are the first person I've persuaded to try this. Let me know how it goes. It just doesn't make sense to me to try this with a real winch and your own plane the first time! Of course, that's how I learned, but it was awkward at least. I never broke a glider on a winch except on purpose, until this year when I assumed all that carbon meant I didn't have to worry, but there were pop offs.
Lincoln:

Thanks for the winch pedal practice routine! LOL! I'm going to give it a try. Believe it or not I have tried practicing my timing on the pedal at home. I'm getting better but was having a hard time keeping the pedal and all coordinated. Just ain't got no rhythm I guess. Yeah, I know, can't walk and chew gum either! Anyway, I decided to start right out using my left foot on the pedal, plane in right hand and TX in left hand. It just makes sense to me that if you lead with your left foot when throwing a ball then you want to lead with your left when launching your plane to help maintain your balance. I've gotten quite a bit better but I haven't got to where I can walk up to that pedal and launch without fear and butterflies yet.

[lincoln]

You want the carbon as close to the top and bottom as you can get it. And you need it at both the top and bottom. If you put, say, .014" or .021" carbon on the bottom of the spar too, it would be very much stronger. You could use a dremel or a router or something to make a slot. If you use it top and bottom, it would pay to go further out than the 5th bay, since it would be so much stronger than the rest of the wing. You're trying for an effect like an I beam, except instead of greater width you're using a stronger material.
snipThe instructions for the GL call for using an additional piece of 3/16 balsa glued on the top of the main beam in each side of the wing out to the 5th rib (I think) to increase the main beam strength if desired. Instead of doing that, I used a 1/16 in. flat carbon rod, and then put a 1/8 balsa strip on top of that. Sort of like home grown plywood with a carbon core. All together, the beam, the carbon and the balsa cap just comes up to the top of the rib contour and so did not disrupt the surface of the wing.

Larry

[lincoln]

BUt if it was me, I'd just fly as is and be careful about the tapping.

[rogerflies]

If you have trouble tapping, you'd love my 18HP Briggs winch.

Despite it's size and the ominous sound of the engine, it's the most user-friendly and gentlest winch I've ever used. Just crank the engine, set the speed, step on the pedal, let off at the top, and shut the engine down.

I'm looking for a deal on a smaller engine to build another one. That engine was free, so I couldn't resist the chance to build what's probably the most powerful RC sailplane winch on the planet.

Roger

[atmosteve]

I have launched a GL on a winch many times. If you know how to tap, it's easy. If you don't know how to tap, turn up the volume on your tv, grab your tx, a can of tuna, and a broomstick, and hide in the basement. Put something heavy in front of the basement door and stay away from the windows. Make sure the area in front of you is clear. Put the tuna on the floor about 6" in front of your favorite foot. Hold the broomstick in one hand and the tx in the other. Start tapping, very short taps about twice per second. Very quickly, throw the broomstick, hard, straight, and level, to the other side of the room, but don't stop tapping. Now, grab your tx, but keep tapping. And pretend you are steering the glider with the rudder to keep it straight. After 10 seconds or so, stop tapping, put in down elevator for half a second, pull up a little, then give one more tap. (last is optional if your winch has a brake, but it's a good habit) After 5 or 10 minutes, you will have more practice tapping than most guys at your field and you should have acquired some expertise. Now, if you want to, you can throw the carbon away. The last step is to come up with a cover story.



Reading this pearl made my day!
I appreciate the idea; I just need to add some cold beer and some good music, and thats me entertained for a half an hour or so. :D

[Steve Boone]

I flew a Sophisticated Lady and a Tower Hobbies Vista all summer. I had never even seen a winch. After having it launched for me a few times I tried it myself. In all honesty after I got over the nervousness of what I was doing it was no big deal. Tap, tap, tap and a bit of a zoom at the end. I'm told I'm a bit agressive with the winch but neither one had any issies (built bone stock) all summer. Well until I launched the S.Lady and didn't turn it on. :( The last time out i decided to try a differnt plane. I launched a Dynaflite Skeeter HL off the winch all day and never had a problem. The line was a bit heavy for it but it still went up just fine. The Skeeter is 7-8 oz all balsa, all stock except the stick built tail to lower weight. I think my high start launches are more demanding on the airframes than the winch is. Especially when it rips your plane through a tree on launch. :eek: If something goes wrong you still have to "go for the ride" with the high start. At least with the winch you can abort a launch.

[ljasmann]

BUt if it was me, I'd just fly as is and be careful about the tapping.

The borrowed GL that I have been flying up till now is owned by the person who usually operates the winch, and it has a stock wing .. so he is used to being gentle with the winch, so I think that I will be OK.

I added the carbon because it was very easy and cheap to do if I did it before I covered the wing. If I need to recover the wing for some reason, I will consider adding another carbon rod on the bottom side of the main boom as well.

For now, it is flying well, so I plan to leave it alone.

Larry

[Lost_Dawg]

If you have trouble tapping, you'd love my 18HP Briggs winch.

Despite it's size and the ominous sound of the engine, it's the most user-friendly and gentlest winch I've ever used. Just crank the engine, set the speed, step on the pedal, let off at the top, and shut the engine down.

I'm looking for a deal on a smaller engine to build another one. That engine was free, so I couldn't resist the chance to build what's probably the most powerful RC sailplane winch on the planet.

Roger

Now THAT is a rig I'm impressed with! Holy cow!

[bverwolf]

I've got a gentle lady I built as my first plane. I learned to fly with this plane on my own. In my opinion, they are what they are called a "gentle lady." After I built mine i tossed it off of a large hill about three times. Everything went well. I had no trouble flying it and it flew well. After that a friend of mine, who used to fly gliders, let me borrow his winch. I'd never seen a winch launch before. I took the winch home and hooked the GL up. I stood on the pedal and wow! I never knew this glider could fly so fast! I lauched this plane many times with a full pedal launch until finally realized that maybe this wasn't real kind to it. It never broke and still hasn't to this day. I still have the bird and still love to float around with it on a good thermal day.

[lincoln]

Had to be a 12V wind. No way a GL would survive a full pedal launch with 12V battery and 6V wind Ford starter motor.
I've got a gentle lady I built as my first plane. I learned to fly with this plane on my own. In my opinion, they are what they are called a "gentle lady." After I built mine i tossed it off of a large hill about three times. Everything went well. I had no trouble flying it and it flew well. After that a friend of mine, who used to fly gliders, let me borrow his winch. I'd never seen a winch launch before. I took the winch home and hooked the GL up. I stood on the pedal and wow! I never knew this glider could fly so fast! I lauched this plane many times with a full pedal launch until finally realized that maybe this wasn't real kind to it. It never broke and still hasn't to this day. I still have the bird and still love to float around with it on a good thermal day.

[lincoln]

Reading this pearl made my day!
I appreciate the idea; I just need to add some cold beer and some good music, and thats me entertained for a half an hour or so. :D
Put the beer in a plastic container if you're going to sip and tap at the same time.

[Beer980]

I am going to look at a Gentle Lady on Friday that I found for sale locally. They don't know much about it other then the tail is attached and the wing is one piece & it is all covered in skin. It sounds like all it needs is the servo's, reciever and battery. For $25 it sounds like a good deal for my first sailplane. I am thinking that when I get good at flying her around I might upgrade to a powered version. Does anyone think I should buy micro servos to save on weight for down the road when I add a motor or just use standard ones. Any ideas on what size motor, ESC and Lipo I should shoot for, maybe 2100? It might be overkill for now running on such a powerful battery for R/E control but I guess with a high start I can get plenty of practice before recharging right?

[slopemeno]

Just use cheap 'ol fullsize servos. And I'd just stick a big NiMH or Nicad in the nose, as you'll probably need the weight anyway. KISS principle really applies here.

[cn0rris]

That's a great price for a built GL if it's in anywhere near decent shape. And compared to a HiStart, you may find electric is just more trouble than it's worth. If you've got a convenient place where you can set up a HiStart, you can fly all day and never have to recharge anything. For me, that simplicity (elegance?) is a big part of the joy of sailplanes.

One good reason to go electric is if the available fields are too small for a HiStart.

[enrico74ec]

With mine GL, servos underneath the wing area as far up front as possible to the the bulkhead, 4 nimh energizer 2500 mah in a square configuration to fit up far in the nose as possible and about 0.5 oz (maybe less, how much weight does 8 bb steel pelets weight) is all I had to do to balance it nicely. The micros are nice if you can modify the pushrods to carbon fiber or something similarly light, and move the servos up to the nose compartment.

All in all flyes very nicely stock ... just my 2 cents

Happy thermals

Enrico

[Beer980]

Ok, I will just stick with no electric upgrade, regular servos & a nice Nimh and save the electric for my next sailplane. My plans were to have one electric and one non powered sailplane anyway, subject to change of course. :D I do have a convenient place to use the histart. Right out my backyard fence gate there is 11 acres behind my house. About 2/3's of it is 20 deeper then the sides. Clay patches but mostly covered with grass and weeds. I am going to go mow down the wild blackberry patch that grows along "The Pit" as we call it to make a nice launch & landing area. Now that it is getting cooler I am tempted to take a shovel to the clay patch and make me a runway for my J3 Cub electric. Here is a link to my "airport" behind my house, which is that slab in the lower left. Google snapped the shot while we were building the house sometime in the early spring before the weeds took over the pit. I have 1100 feet from the back gate to the far side and about 800 feet side to side. That should give me enough flying room right?
My "Airport" (http://www.flickr.com/photos/23006299@N04/3027889934/)

[Lost_Dawg]

Beer980: You're making the right choice IMHO. The GL is plenty light enough. If you make it even lighter you will only have more trouble flying it in any wind.

[slopemeno]

Plenty of room. 300' in any direction will be enough for a high start, and I think that bare soil patch will be a thermal generator. Try getting into the air around 1:00 pm, and let us know how it goes.

[Speedo125]

I often launched my old stock GL with the monster hi-start that I used to lift my heavy full-house models. Why you ask? 'Cause that's all I had at the time. Yeah, I used a lot of rubber to hold the wing on, but they never folded on me.

That GL sure flew well. In fact, it was the only total unrecovered fly away that I ever had. She was pretty high at the time anyway, and by the time I realized how fast she was going up it was too late to do anything about it. Here one minute and gone the next.

Thom

[dementia]

I often launched my old stock GL with the monster hi-start that I used to lift my heavy full-house models. Why you ask? 'Cause that's all I had at the time. Yeah, I used a lot of rubber to hold the wing on, but they never folded on me.

That GL sure flew well. In fact, it was the only total unrecovered fly away that I ever had. She was pretty high at the time anyway, and by the time I realized how fast she was going up it was too late to do anything about it. Here one minute and gone the next.

Thom
Just think how much profile theory had to go into handling the flapping wrinkles on the loose upper surface during launch. :D

I simply stuck to high starting the GL, and it is still flying after 20 years without constantly retightening the Monocoat.

[Beer980]

Well my Gentle Lady buy went south. The plane is not put together very well at all from my rookie eye. The husband got it from someone else who mostly assembled it. It is not a good job in my opinion. The skin was not tight and some of the extra decals were peeling off. The wing tips & tail were covered in black with white center wings. Along the leading edge were red flame kind of graphics on it but parts were peeling up. The tail had a questionable job done to it. It seemed like it had a lot of skin on it and not very precise either. Also when the rudder moved right it would hit the screws from the elevator servo arm if you gave it a little bit of up elevator. So you could turn right but not up at the same time. This I thought might be a problem area. I thought it was a little odd that the linkages were wood in the middle with small standard push rod ends. There were no directions but I am sure I could get those off the net if I needed them. There did not seem to be any way to mount the servos inside the fuse that I could see so maybe it was not totaly finished. So in the end I passed on the deal. So I will continue my search for a beginner sailplane again.

[cn0rris]

You might want to consider building a GL or maybe an Oly II from a kit. If you're going to fly woodies, you'll eventually need to know how to fix them, and having built one is the best way to learn that.

[ljasmann]

Gentle Lady kits are very cheap. I got mine on Ebay for less than $25.. and the build was fairly simple. If you are careful to build the wing straight and true, and if you take your time covering it, it will be a great plane. Time to build it was about two months.. and it could have been done much more rapidly. I enjoy the building part so much that I tend to build more slowly, just so I can enjoy it. I don't particularly like to use CA glue, and prefer plain old wood glue which takes a while to dry. That is OK, I am not in a rush. The weather is closing things down for us here anyway, so it is time for winter building.

I get a LOT of satisfaction from having a plane fly well that I built myself. There is something of me in it that really makes a difference.

Larry Jasmann

[Beer980]

Right now I don't have a place that I can set up an area to build in. I will when we move to Texas. For the time being I will have get an ARF to start out. I like some of the ones from www.r2hobbies.com : 1.5M Ultra Thermo Slope NPS Glider, 1.6M Bulero Glider Ultra Thermo Glider, 1.6M Wind Surfer EP II Glider, 1.4M Blue Wing Thermo Sailplane Glider and 4Ch RC EP 2M Sport Thermo Glider Sailplane DB ARF Kit. My other favorites are E-flite Ascent, Fling Hand Launch, Fling 2 Meter, UpStar, and Filip "V" Glider. I am still looking at what is available out there though.

[kw5368]

Why don't you get a Tower Hobbies Vista? There is a lot of information on here about it. Similar to a Gentle Lady. Look for a $10 off $50 coupon on here or if you sign up at Tower Hobbies they will send you a $20 off $50 in your e-mail, and you can't beat an ARF for $60.

[Beer980]

Thanks, I will look into it. The coupons make it a real good deal too. I see they have a powered version for $30 more.

[Steve Boone]

I have a Vista I bought when the S.Lady got ripped through a tree when I high-started it. It's actually about the same as a GP Spirit. I specked it out several times over the summer. It's a bit heavy but for $50 not a bad deal. Either of the ladies would be a better choice on calmer days. In a bit of a breeze the Vista faired better though.