Hi everybody.

I just wanted to drop in to say g'day, and let you know I was still around.  I've been so busy, and shiftwork has really messed up my leasure time, but my oldest son is repeatedly reminding me that we need to build some gliders again.

Well, as I haven't been doing any glidererering at all, I'll give you a life-update instead.  Recent significant events:  child with pneumonia, recovered;  new (used) 4wd, trying to get back in the camping habit, wife got her old job back, then slipped on a wet floor and is currently injured; and me - I'm just damn tired all the time I'm not at work.

How about the rest of you?  What's going on, apart from the gliders you've been showing in the other threads?

Not if I'm throwing it, John.
Pijuvwy, 'bout time you made an appearance.  No whining about your sore pinky or your busy career, time to build some gliders. 
I had a friend who once said he had no time for reading.  My answer to him, was the same as the one I am conveying to you.  Make bloody time!!
George

It's nice to be back.  PeeTee, re the elliptical-hedral, I actually bought the materials, and at the time had a surge of ideas and enthusiasm, then after a while only the materials remained.  If I can get the other ingredients back...

I'll start with a base of pine, upon which to build a curved platform, THEN on that to build the wing(s).  I still want to do 2 of the same shape, one with 2 thou-ish veneers of carbon, and one with two bloody great chunks of carbon.  For comparison purposes, as you may recall.

G'day again.  Cane season finished a few weeks ago, so I offer no good excuse for no gliders in the meantime.

My oldest son bought a park flyer with his hard-earned pocket money.  I broke his wing in the first flight yesterday - I had too much elevator trimmed in after test-tosses - seems I was looking for a glider-like glide-angle for landing.  So of course, with power on, it went nose-high and stalled.

New wing this morning, around $15, some nice flights from both me and my son.  Eventually it landed fairly gently up a tree, and some kind helpful teenagers kicked their football at it to get it down while I yelled "Stop!" and a few other choice words. It came out of the tree with broken tailwing, broken canopy, and some kinks in the mainwing.  New tailwing $7, canopy on order.

OK, now I get almost on-topic for the glider forum:

I'm thinking, due to the expense of the replacement parts, and the glider-ish design of the park flyer, that I might be better to make replacement wings for the store-bought model.  The original wing is close to the continuous curve-hedral idea, so perhaps I might have the necessary impetus to get my butt in gear and have a go at it, finally.

To duplicate fairly closely the original wing, I'll need to have an under-cambered, and rather thin wing, about 6.5mm with span of about 800mm.  Foam core with thin plastic skin makes it pretty light, too.  Will be tricky to get that shape and weight with balsa, I think.

Pij, I was thinking of you a week or two ago and your balsa finish lab tests. A few of the guys had said that a coat or two of dope toughens balsa, and as I've had props collapse under the sanding block as they started to get nice and thin, I figured that if I carved the face to completion, rather than just rough, and then dope it, before starting to shape the back, it would stand up better. So, on the Maggie's prop, I got the face all carved and sanded with 220, dead flat because they say that nobody undercambers prop blades anymore, and sloshed on 3 coats of unthinned tautening dope. After an overnight dry, I went to work on the back. As the blade got thinner, all the tension built up in the dope went to work and it pulled itself into an undercamber that looked like a halfpipe! It was alarming 'til I figured out what was going on, but I finshed up the back, gave it several coats of the same dope and it pulled the undercamber back out after a while. I'll use Sig dope next time.
                  Nice to have you back.
                            Art.

Aahh, feels like "family" being back here.

Before I did those dope tests, my extremely thin trailing edges, or sometimes the entire wing, would warp towards whichever side was doped first, but doping the second side would only partly undo the warping, and in an uneven way.  I suppose the un-even-ness was due to variations in the balsa, or variations in the thickness of the dope.  Perhaps the smaller area involved on a prop would minimize those variations.

To try to match the foam wing weight, I was considering sheet balas top and bottom with ribs between, and carbon to hold the curve-hedral, or possibly a single (top) balsa skin with ribs below, though then I don't know how to hold the curve-hedral.

John, I just went to actually check on its recovery. The episode is about 5 days old now, and there's a barely discernable concave surface, about enough to slip an index card under a straightedge at the widest point of the blade, which is 1 1/4 inches. I have to get some of that light glass cloth.
             Art.