So I went out today for a short flight around 1pm and the winds were about 5-8mph. It was nice and sunny with no clouds and about 98F. I only took out my Gnome HLG because I thought I would finally be able to catch some stronger thermals. So far, I've had only one to two minute flights in very weak lift. The problem where I'm flying from is that there is usually a weak lift from ground to about two hundred feet and then once you get above that the whole sky opens up and you'll find lift almost everywhere. The trick is to get to that first 200 feet. I can't tell you how many throws I've done only to result in thirty second flights. At first, it was old business as usual ie. short flights. Then I tossed it up and got lucky and ran into a nice thermal giving me nine minutes of flight. I was really high up and I tried to spin the plane with up elevator and full rudder and it just kept going up. So I changed strategy and pointed the nose down at 40 degree or so angle and rode the glider down to safer altitude. The wing is built really strong on the Gnome (full D tube) so there was no problem. Once I got it down to about two hundred feet the lift kind of disappeared so I had to land.

After that one, I tried couple more hand tosses resulting in short flights again. Once in a while, there would be this sudden surge of wind passing by. I would toss the gllider into the wind, stay up wind and hoping to catch a thermal to no avai. So this time when I felt the surge of wind I...Continue Reading

Two months ago I've decided to build an electric paragon 3 meter glider from the 70's. I never had a 3M glider, only 2M and smaller. In past year I built a Bob Martin's Pussycat 2M glider and hand launched Gnome glider, both from plans from outerzone. Printed plans on 11x8 paper on laser printer then stitched them together with tape. About thirty years ago, I built the pussycat as a pure glider using #64 rubber bands then later surgical tubing as my hi-start. I could never catch thermals as I was just learning to fly. Months later I put on cox tee dee .051 on the pylon above wing and got good 3 minute flights that way. On the last flight, my rx batteries run out and the plane nose dived into ground with nose planted half a foot underground. Wing destroyed and fuse too. To relive my youth, I built a new pussycat last year, but this time with electric motor on a pylon as well as using a dynaflite heavy duty hi-start. I never had a small hand launch glider so I then built the Gnome and what a fun plane that is. Caught couple of small thermals early this year with gnome. I live in Arizona so we got like 80 degrees in february.

Anyways, on to the Paragon build. I will stick to the plans except I will make wing a bolt on with two nylon bolts in trailing edge and a dowel in leading edge. I omit F2 bullkhead as I don't need it and I need space inside the front of fuse for screwdriver to mount the motor to F1 from outside. I already built this plane and now I'm just documenting the...Continue Reading