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If you liked paper airplanes as a kid and you're curious about the current state of the art for hand thrown aircraft, check out "discus launch" gliders (DLGs).
by matthewmcg 9y ago
If you liked paper airplanes as a kid and you're curious about the current state of the art for hand thrown aircraft, check out "discus launch" gliders (DLGs). These are radio-controlled models with a 1 or 1.5 meter wing span that are designed to be strong enough to be hand launched to almost 200ft but light and aerodynamic enough that they can be held aloft for a very long time by thermals.
There are some interesting design choices that have to be made between optimizing for maximum launch height and maximum glide performance.
Here's a video showing a recent model available in kit form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD0VXi_DBMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD0VXi_DBMM
- pmcollins 9y agoHere's the page if you want to buy the one in the video or learn more about its structure http://f3j.in.ua/snipe-2.html http://f3j.in.ua/snipe-2.html Get a load of those prices. :-) Also, I love how the minimalism even extends to the domain name.
- matthewmcg 9y agoYep, hand-made carbon fiber parts for niche applications are unavoidably expensive. Flying one of these things is like tossing a decent spec Macbook into the air and hoping you don't get it stuck in a tree. F3K and F3J refer to numbered sections within the competition rules[1] set by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI). FAI is the Geneva-based organization that tracks most "official" flight records for all kinds of aircraft. F3K is the hand-launched glider class and F3J is the thermal duration soaring class. [1] https://www.fai.org/sites/default/files/documents/sc4_vol_f3_soaring_18.pdf https://www.fai.org/sites/default/files/documents/sc4_vol_f3... The community has adopted these designations as a shorthand for the aircraft types, sort of like how in the U.S. people refer "401(k) accounts" or "501(c)(3) organizations."