Hi There,
Started this baby in early December last year 2012 and worked over the break until 2013 made some good progress on the structure, had a few re-engineering moments , and some cosmetic changes.
It will start looking better with paint and primer ,hopefully have it ready for the Sungazer scale event in March.
cheers
Mike
ps anyone who was following the JS1 build thread will realise I have been distracted but once this is done , I will get back there.

Hi I have moved this mini build thread to the electric sailplane forum where it belongs
cheers
Mike

Here is a pic of "purple haze" colour scheme its bold and real shiney in the sun.

Hi All,
Just a couple of recent photos of slope soaring at the annual Sungazer event for scale gliders in South Africa. These are of my scratch built DG505 now on flights 3 and 4, fantastic when in the air, goes were you point it and rather easy to fly in spite of ,or because of it's size.
Cheers

Hi There,
Couple of nice pictures taken by Fuzzchucker (Izak) over the weekend
Conditions were strong and turbulant but that is what makes it a challange.
I flew both my small 4mtr semi-scale ASW27 and 6.5 mtr Nimbus 4 with a small video camera on the wing and will edit and make a youtube video when time allows.
regards
Mike

Hi all,
Last weekend attended a PSS weekend to fly my new SU-35 PSS glider
not my run of the mill type glider and a new set of challanges.
end result was a very successful maiden with about a 30 minute flight and great to fly.

After this and to enjoy the superb conditions it was time to soar with my semi-scale 7mtr LAK glider.
had an amazing flight.just under 1 hour.
regards
Mike
two absolute extremes for slope soaring gliders, both fly well but are very different as you can imagine.

Hi there,
Just a couple of maiden flight pictures of the 8mtr DG505 flown in a 30km/hr wind off the slope.
The flight lasted about 35minutes and was pretty uneventfull ..as a new maiden flight should be.
This is basically a whole new scratch build plane with only the two main wing panels being recycled from my old flat wing DG500.

regards
Mike

Hi Guys,
Couple of pictures of slope soaring on the slopes in the Coffee Bay area. Great scenery and good flying.
cheers
...Continue Reading

Hi There,
I love flying sailplanes, but somedays the wind does not blow at our favourite slope, or a tug is not available for Scale gliding , or winching is a hassle, so I decided a few electric sailplanes are in order.
Yesterday I maidened this 4.5mtr glider and the motor, battery and ESC setup certainly did the job.
It has a 6 s 2750mah lipo, 80amp speed controller and Emaxx motor 4020 bl
The Watt meter gave a current draw of about 56amps WOT and 1340watts.
This bird weighs about 5 kg but the climb was good and it then soared in the thermals for about 40 minutes, I am happy. a good maiden flight.
cheers
Mike

Hi all,
My latest project the Ventus 6mtr flies, this one weighs in at a light 6kg and flies like a dream, even with the light 55grams/dmsq wing loading,
penetration in a fairly brisk wind was no problem. The flaps allow one to basically hover down into the very small slope landing zone seen in these photo's.
I await some launch sequence photo's from one of my flying buddies and will post these soon. Oh I forgot as part of a challange it was scratch built in 24hours of labour across 14 days ,not to be confused with 1 day. This is my 6th one out of my molds so the practice is starting to pay off.
Regards
Mike


Part 2 May 2011
This Nimbus 6mtr has has several good slope flights as well as being aerotowed, it flies well so was ideal as a test bed for a self launch system
the curved arm is made from ply-wood and is shaped to clear the prop as it unfolds, works well.
The Motor is a Turnigy 42-60 500kva , the prop a CAM 14x9.5 the speed controller a Turnigy thrust 70 amp and the Lipo a Turnigy 2200 5s, all reasonably priced items.
A test revealed 1100 watts and a 56amp load , the speed contoller and motor stay cool.
First flight was last sunday , into a 15km/h headwind the glider was airborn in about 20-30 mtrs and climbed out at about 45 degrees.
This ship weighs 8kgs so I was more than impressed.
One issue was at the start the motor pushes the nose onto the ground, but I just keep going on the grass until the speed built a little, then it was possible to lift the nose and run on the main gear, this was so short though as the wings AOA changed it lifted off.
I plan to do some more flight testing soon and fiqure the trim changes that
make for smoother flying.
cheers
Mike

Hi there,
In 2008 I scratch built a really big semi-scale DG500 (8mtrs), at the time I built a big flat square wing joiner of carbon fibre , unfortunately the wings have very little di-hedral and in its 2 x flights one in 2008 and one in 2009 , this glider never quite looked right with the flat wing and upright winglets.
It weighs 16kg and is a monster to handle on the ground , but flies and thermals well off the slope.
Anyway long story short, I cut the winglets off and changed the tips, In my view it looks a whole lot better, it flies again in a few weeks time and it will be interesting to see its new look in the air.
cheers
Mike

Hi All,
A few photo's from a recent slope outing , and perfecting the flying, landing and getting to know the gliders.

The photo's of the SB-10 are of Norbert flying his glider in the late afternoon ,
valley release, the glider is balasted up and kept "on the step" for some close up flying.

The KA-7 had its 3rd flight and although a basic model with ailerons, and elevator control, it has a useful speed range and looks great in the air, it thermals well and has no real vices, great for my sons first semi-scale glider.

The Ventus with the colourfull markings is being flown as a video camera ship and all the lines underneath make it way more visible, this flight started with a huge lull and a some tense moments before the strong thermal reached the slope, the video is ok but was zoomed in a bit to much.

Regards
Mike

Hi There,
During an outing to the slope one of the guys flew a Celstar aerobatic glider, designed and built locally in S.A. anyway it came to an abrupt end when the wings folded in a very strong wind. I asked what was
happening with the pieces ...bin no way I want them , I'll see what can be recovered and put it together for my son.
The long and the short of it is that I will build a simple ka-7 for my son and keep the Celstar for me.
A search on the internet revealed two models being built in Switzerland, home of one of the remaining Celstars ,another is in the USA.
I have rebuilt mine in the original S.A.Airways colour scheme and have yet to fly it.
Regards
Mike

On a recent slope trip I had set myself 4 goals.

1. The maiden flight of a DG 300 which was recently completed, it was a fuselage I aquired from the Multiplex kit of a few years back and I built a set of slightly stretched wings , using the HQ 3/12 wing section. flew well

2.To fly my semi-scale 6mtr Ventus with and electric power pod, the aim was to see if when the lift died , was it possible to gain safe height for a landing back on top. The AXI motor was more than able to loft this 8kg glider from down in the valley to safe height on about 10 attempts on the 2300mah Lipo
battery. This will be some insurance in area's were outlandings are not an option. more than enough power.(a bit noisy)

3.To Finally fly my semi-scale DG500 at 7.8mtr and 16kg, it has only had a short 8minute flight exactly 0ne year and 1 day ago, I really wanted to test its flight more. The flight was great but some things look odd, namely the lack of di-hedral wHich I will fix by building a new wing joiner, and the oversize winglets which seem to work but need to be reduced in size.
The flight testing went well with about 30 minutes of airtime in good soaring conditions.

4. Goal 4 was to fly with my video camera on board and capture an in-flight
video and this was excellent , but I need to experiment on the zoom of the camera a bit more.The flight images are good but the turns tend to make you dizzy when watching .

All in all a good trip and all goals accomplished and much learnt.
Cheers
Mike

deleted

A series of photo's of probably a young eagle trying to make a statement about his territory. This bird flew amongst a group of gliders , but one fast glass ship just seemed to bother it.
Even with the pilot taking evasive action the birds talons left their mark.
The eagle then flew off apparently not too sure of his intended prey.
This was on the slope at Volksrust.

Two of my Jarts, a third is being planned but will be special

I am most humbled by the nice comments I received on my Blogs first post .So I am doing a follow up post( no 2) which leads up to the flight of the really big DG5OO featured in post 1 .

I have built and flown model aircraft for the last 40 years, I took a break for about 10 years as my family got started, and got back into modelling about 3 years ago.
I joined a model gliding club BERG-GLIDERS and was introduced to the art of slope soaring. This opened a whole new chapter of R/C soaring for me. I was most impressed by the large sailplanes, they have a presence in the sky that is hard to beat and when they do a high speed pass ,the grace and energy is flying effiency at its best....I was truely hooked.
I basically taught myself to build using composite materials with a little help from local guru's and the internet forums like this. Here are photos of the earlier projects.I design and scratch, build including the moulds, but these are stand off(far off) scale gliders meant to fly. I love building and encourage others to do the same , the scale gliding support is growing here and thats great....Continue Reading

My most memorable modelling moment, maidening my monster machine.