Today I went on a road trip to fly at the Fern Prairie Modelers field outside of Washougal, Washinton. Scott Summersgill was there heaving a really neat little HLG that weighed next to nothing and whose wing outline markedly resembled a bird. I was marveling at the little craft (never flown HLGs before) when Scott asked if I'd like to fly it. Always one to try something new or different, we walked away from the primary airfield, Scott handed me his Flash 5X and gave the little plane a heave that promptly put it right in a rising thermal. Off it went circling higher with ease until I was just starting to get a little nervous. About the time I was going to give a bit of down elevator I noticed a pair of young hawks headed straight for the little glider with Mom in tow.
Oh, no.
Sure enough, these two characters drew a bead on the glider, stooped in on it and for the next 30 seconds or so I had to dip, loop, dive and roll to keep the youngsters at bay so as not to hand Scott a ragged bit of foam and balsa when I got done with my first HLG flight. They finally noticed that Mom had flown on over towards some nearby hills and gave up the game to rejoin her leaving me shaking but giving everyone a good laugh.
This HLG stuff is pretty cool.

mw

All that with just a hand launch ?? COOL!

You bet!
Guess what kind of planes I'm taking another look at?

mw

Mark

Tempting fate flying too near aggressive Birds-O-Prey?

Blanco thursday had a pair of really big brown birds that could only have been Golden Eagles. I tried to follow them around but the lift got sparse farther out from the hill. Still they are wonderful to see, hawks seem to take exception to model flying as I've seen them extend their talons at a friends glider.

Looee

I got some glimpses of the hawk I was harrassing (or was it the other way around) today on my Cutie-Cam video..
..a

Originally posted by Looooeeee!
Mark

Tempting fate flying too near aggressive Birds-O-Prey?

Nope. The field doesn't have any trees nearby and the birds were apparently just on the way through to look for lunch and decided to dawdle and have some fun. They were seen stooping and diving on each other just after my incident with them. That's what led us to believe that it was a couple of youngsters out for some training with a parental unit.

mw

The little HLG was designed by a great guy named Harold Locke. The AUW of the glider is about 3.4 ozs, using Lithium batteries. A few grams more for the 110 NiCds.

Once you fly one of these little gliders, you are hooked. Harold has taken all the fun that flying entails and boiled it down into one of the most fun-to-fly gliders I have ever seen.

Harold has given permission to put the plans onto a web site for everyone to work from. The site is just at its beginning stages and the plans have been scanned today. I have contacted John (the person building the site) tonight and have offered to help get it ready as soon as possible. I'll post more info here (or maybe in the sailplanes or foamies area) when the site is more mature.


Silver

Mark,

I'm just glad you got her home in one piece. Although the benefits of flying a glider made with $3.50 worth of material is that if it comes home with a few claw marks in it, just build a new one. Really though, Mark gave those hawks a run for their money. I think once he started doing consecutive loops they figured this wasn't any ordinary bird!!!

As Silver said, Harold has designed one sweet little hand launch. It is tip launchable (is that a word!), and launches are easily 100 feet if you put some umph into it. No rudder preset to worry about either. Mine has an AUW of 3.9 oz, will thermal on a grasshopper fart, and amazes me everytime I fly it. The other cool thing that Silver forgot to mention is that Harold gave both of us his planes. How cool is that!

I was out at the SASS field in Redmond a couple of months ago and started up a conversation with this guy (Harold) who was flying this neat little HLG. He was launching higher than the $400 composite ships and outflying them to boot. He asked if I wanted to fly it, "hell yeah" I said. I fly it around for about 10 minutes or so, just having a good time. I ask him how I can get my hands on one to which he replies, "beg a little." So I do, just joking around of course. "You want the radio gear with that too?" OK now I'm speachless. Not only did he give me his plane, but he gave me his radio, servos, receiver, receiver battery pack, etc. I was totally blown away to say the least. Anyway, that is the story of how I got my HLG. As it has no name, I call it the Harold special.

It's nice to hear that the plans are going to be up on the web soon. Anyone who is interested in a GREAT flying HLG, that can thermal with the best of them, give this one a try.

Later,
Scott

PS: Mark, you need to make one of these then we can gang up on the hawks and even up the odds a bit!

Oh yeah, one other thing. Mark forgot to mention that his first HLG flight lasted over 11 minutes. Not too bad if you ask me.

Later,
Scott

Silver,

You get the radio gear for your glider yet? We need to head up to 60 acres for a flying session. Give me a call when you have it finished.

Later,
Scott

I am really amazed all this can be done with just a hand launch, so I did some looking around at some other HLG and none of them even come close to that weight of 3.9oz.

Anybody got any pics of this 3.9oz bird, the "Harold special" ?. What kind of wing span are we looking at ?.

And this Harold fellow, he would'nt be in need of a son, would he ?.

I'll post some pics when I get home.

Scott

Here is a link to some pics of the "Harold Special" along with some of the rest of my fleet. The quality isn't the greatest as the pictures are taken from some video we took of the glider, but you'll get the idea. Enjoy! http://photos.yahoo.com/ssummersgill

Scott

William,

The wing span is 42" and the length is 20". It uses a 10% wing with 22° of dihedral. It is made from cheap white foam covered in 1.6mm clear packing tape. The boom is a spiral-wrapped carbon rod, the push rods are .030 carbon rods, and the tail feathers are 1/16 balsa bonded with CA. There is some light fiberglass reinforcements at the tail and wing saddle.

Most of the parts are picked up locally from places like Lowes, Gasworks Kite Shop, and the LHS. The 1.6mm packing tape is a bit harder to find.


Scott,

The working name of the glider is the "Little Nipper". I don't know the whole story on why the name was chosen, but that's the working name.

I have everything I need to put mine back together except the second MX-30 servo. I'm going to use the two 3v lithiums, then later maybe the 110mah NiCds. I'm hoping to get it put back together before the rain grounds us for the season. (You must have caught Harold on a REALLY good day to have him part with his radio gear too! )


Silver

Keep us posted on the plans and web site. I've got several projects queued up for this winter and would love to add this one to the list.

Chris