A few of us started playing with aero-towing last year, and had allot of fun with a cheap sailplane that eventually proved not to be up to the task. Recently we had started talking about attempting this again, specifically for an airshow that the local club puts on for charity. I also wanted to be able to slope the glider because we slope more than we aero tow. Our slope spot is not exactly perfect, the lift is unreal, but there is no where to land. So the airplane had to be durable, cheap, and quick to build. Obviously spad was the only answer. 4 mil corro is all that's available locally so to be able to get the wing loading down we had to go big, really big. 16 foot worth of wing and 8 foot worth of length. I'll post more specific plans later on as I am designing as I go only working off a ruff drawing. I decided to do a laminate profile fuselage with 3 layers of 1/2 inch pink foam in between the corro sides, the spars are Home Depot yard stick ripped down to 1 inch and then spliced together to 92 inches per wing, just a little short of the tip to allow for the tip taper. I am going to use a 1 inch by 30 inch aluminum wing tube and socket to join the wings (just because I had it in the basement). I'll post more as I go.

Dang! Now thats a SPAD!! Its huge!

Progress today, spars are glued up and glued to bottom surface of both wings, ailerons are glued to bottom surface of both wings, dug the wheel well out of the fuselage , cut and sandwiched the nose block, the rest of the time today was spent figuring a projected weight and a removable tail system.

Awesome, good luck with it!

Ooooh! I like this!

Finally got some time in on the glider, it's been a really long trying week so not much progress, cut the canopy out and covered it black, wings are folded and glued, vertical spar was glued/taped to the leading edge horizontal was folded and glued with a spar (arrow shaft), nose block is ruff cut and laminated, the wing tube will take some work to get it straight, or at least straighter, but at least the initial hole is drilled.

Got some more work done this week. Between work and family even spads are hard for me to find time to build. I mounted the tail and made it removable for ease of transport. Mounted the nose block with tow release, covered the top and bottom of the fuselage with monocoat, lined up and glued the wing tube center sheath in the fuselage, and glued in the anti rotation pin for the wing as well. All that's left to do is to mount electronics and throw it off a hill.

A side note on the spar, initially the spar design that I had pictured earlier seemed plenty strong as I wanted a little bit of flex. Now I'm really questioning it, I think it will be fine, but if I was doing it again, I would run the aft spar full length again and I would change the airfoil so that the thickest part would be more towards the leading edge. I would also either laminate in foam or make a box construction still using ward sticks, just to eliminate some of the flex.

Lookin' great!

Very cool, you should post link in sailplane section.

Fuselage and wings look great .. and love the colour one slight thing just looking at your tail assembly I think your horizontal stab might need to be bigger /have a greater fixed area to support that aft fuselage ..http://atlanticfc.org.za/RC%20design.html Tlar.. but drawing on collective experience ditto the area of the rudder fixed portion and its attachment if you want this to be aerobatic

Might you consider a V tail ? I m into waterplanes and some of those have taken to using a new layout a high T tail atop a a narrow V ..twin rudder best example is the Samara http://en.avron.ru/company/news/perv...o-samoleta-l42 Ive worked with Correx so I know single sheet fins can be a bit flexy and this sort of tail is designed as far as I can see to be self bracing as well as giving greater authority to the rear control surfaces http://en.avron.ru/l42m-samara/specification, Beriev use it on their 112/4 designs........... just a possibility

how did she fly ?