Gliders

When I was quite young (maybe 10-12?) I somehow picked up this obsession with RC and flight. There were a couple of nearby college students I met somehow who had a couple of gliders and took me with them flying. From that day on, I was hooked. Right now I have 3 planes, and am considering building a fourth powered zagi for fun without having to find a slope. All of these are made from Expanded Polyproplyene (EPP) foam which makes them darn close to indestructible. The continued existence of my first plane (Super Sidewinder) is a testament to the strength of EPP! The picture to the right is at Shell Ridge in the Bay Area, with my Red/White SuperSidewinder just barely included in the picture. Gosh, it's really hard to get a photo of both the pilot and the plane at the same time.

AGR models Super Sidewinder slope plane (60") This plane is a flat wing slope plane with large ailerons and an elevator. Unfortunately I tried to learn on this rather fast & sensitive plane, which was difficult. But somehow the EPP survived the beating and the plane is still in decent shape (after a couple of new noses I've put on it). It is quite combatable now after some modifications I made, but it drops fast in low wind making it hard for non-consistent winds. I'm using a simple Hitec 2ch radio.

Daves Aircraft Works(DAW) TG-3 (Training Glider 3) (72") This is the plane I should have learned on. It's super stable, slow flying, and all around sturdy. It flies in low wind, and is actually rather agile if you build it with ailerons. I've built the aileron configuration and am quite happy with it. I generally prefer tofly this one because it is much more relaxing to pilot. I use a Futaba 7ch computer radio for this one, what a difference mixing can make!

ZAGI 3c flying wing combat plane (48") This one was built after a long delay, mid 2004. I have only flown it once, although it is harder to get to slope sites in Portland unfortunatley. This plane flies well, and is nice and small to carry to the slope. I'm looking forward to flying more with it!

Resources for flying

Bay Area Stuff:
Bay Area wind vector map
Northern California Slope Soaring
The Soarheads is a good resource, frequency database of flyers, sites, etc...
Other Places:
Portland has the PASS which seems to be a good starting place..
Also in Portland the NW Weather site may be useful for wind reports..
Wind conditions in San Diego & other areas
Fatlion has an excellent, comprehensive introduction.
Daves Aircraft Works has some great EPP planes. Dave is a great guy too..
You gotta see the Mongo flying wing.. (the Sr. is 8' wingspan!)
The California Combat video gets me chomping at the bit to fly..

Warning, this might be boring

After I was initially hooked I've had several seperate attempts to get involved in this wonderful hobby. When I was still young, I did a lot of reading through magazines to figure out what was out there. I watched my friends fly a couple of times and I was convinced that I wanted to try it.

Try #1
My first plane was a Goldberg Gentle Lady 2 channel sailplane. I ordered it from Tower Hobbies and paid under $20. Then of course there was the glue, pins, more glue, and a Futaba radio. With some help from Dad we put together some equipment to build it. We used a narrow hollow core door covered with corkboard to use for a building board to keep the wing straight while it was under construction. The process of gluing the balsa pieces together was far too painful for me to stay focused on it very long. I worked on the wing for maybe 2 (clumsy) weeks and decided that it was just going to take too long to finish it. I abandoned ship, sold the plane to my friend who took me out flying. So much for try #1.

Try #2
A friend of my fathers (Robert Crowell) had an older plane with a stretched nylon and fiberglass frame wing and a plastic fuselage. He said it was pretty rugged, and it was mostly built already.. not too much work for me to do. So I got it, installed my radio gear and went to try to fly it. Man I was so excited! Well, at a place called "Thunder Hill" in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina there's a pretty good slope for flying. I tried on what they call the "backside" which is a lot easier to walk down the hill to get your plane when it crashes (and it did). Hindsight is 20/20, but these first few attempts were pretty good although they felt pretty bad. The plane was quite heavy, but it flew. This says nothing about my ability to keep it up.. It usually took a little while for it to hit the ground so I got a few seconds of air time. Just a lot more walking. Eventually, the plane crashed rather hard and broke part of the wing. That plane was never repaired, I gave it back to Rob. But the seed was planted.

Feeling a little disenchanted with RC planes, I adventured over to the flashy and fast RC cars. This turned out to be a 10 year distraction.. You can read about this stint on the car section of the site. I ended up owning two cars, only one of which is still alive..

Try #3
After quite a few years (while working in California) I ran into some really cool people who told me about the newer Expanded PolyPropylene(EPP) gliders which are nearly indestructible. With the teasing mention of lots of people flying combat in the local area I was easily hooked. Luckily, since I was working and living near quite a number of good sites to fly I could finance and support the hobby for real this time. I bought the Sidewinder plane (Red one mentioned above) to learn on, little did I know how much I had to learn. I assembled it in a rush to fly (who doesn't) but still managed to take up all of 3-4 evenings trying to be somewhat careful in the building.

Then the crashing begun. I was flying at Del Valle (in Livermore) because it was so close to where I worked, but I didn't yet understand what wind conditions were suitable for flying. For the first couple of weeks, the sport was more walking down the hill and climbing back up with the plane than it was actually flying. I'd launch, "fly" (stall, rather) for 15 seconds then crash, walk down the hill, pick up the plane, climb back up, repeat.

Many bad landings later I began to be able to actually fly longer, and land better. (not good yet, just not landing on the tailfins every time). This is when it really started to get fun. I had help from Axel, a guy working at LLNL who was very nice - we even took a trip to the Merritt College flying site in Oakland one day. I was still hiking a lot, but learning.

Then all of a sudden one day, it seemed like I could keep the plane in the air for as long as I wanted. That wasn't entirely true, but it sure felt like that! Then I began experimenting with combat, flying lots of planes in the sky trying to hit eachother and make the other one crash. Then I again realized as I got beat up in the sky several times, I still knew nothing about real flying.

As a side note, almost every educational experience I've undertaken has involved jumping in over my head, and then trying to figure out what I just bit off. Engineering school as both an Undergrad and Graduate Student were like that, and I have a feeling that most of the rest of my career, hobbies included, will be too. Strange how that learning process happens huh.

All this new flying experience brought new attention to the plane I was flying, and I picked out another (the TG-3 mentioned above). Some of the construction is documented in picture form on the picture pages. Turned out to be a great plane, very sturdy, stable flyer, and graceful. I really should have learned on this plane, but it is much more relaxing to fly than the Sidewinder.

So I've had a variety of excursions with the TG-3 including all over the Bay Area (usually flew Del Valle, Shell Ridge, Merritt college, Tick Hill, and Windy Hill). It flies in a pretty light wind, so it's pretty versatile. I've also flown more recently at the Torrey Pines Gliderport, although the wind has been pretty light every time I've been save for once. (That was a great day -- I flew as long as I could keep my fingers from freezing!)

Have a great day