Glider

The

June 10th

More retroactive journaling using notes/images from before

* June 9th *

Hmmm... I already have a decent glider, why not make it powered with a motor!

This is the turning point in this project that makes this on theme for Highway. No longer am I trying to optimize the glider for a launcher, now it is being transformed into more like a simple rc airplane with motors!

Ideas:

Powered motors and propellors on wings by a remote controller
Loads (> 1 hour) of journalling for this repository, all journals from this day forward will be done the day of/ day following! This project was initially not going to be submitted for Highway, as the basic idea was a simple engineering project, but I want to try to convert this into a motorized glider!

June 5th

Built v2 of the glider!

Differences: - Larger Tailfin - Hotglue is used to secure the rudder to the plastic pipe, and the tailfin to the rudder - The wings are secured by velcro - When assembling the new structure I told my teacher about the problems I was having with the rubber bands (1. the wings rip, 2. the wings move) and he reccomended that I try out velcro. I can immediately see the reduced stress on the wings. Velcro is also great as I can quickly experiment with different wing positions on the airframe.

June 3rd

Through a great deal of testing the wings had cut due to the pressue of the rubber bands. The initial tailplane that I lasercut was also was too small and the temporary popsicle stick that was masking taped on just didn't suffice. Thus, time to go back to OnShape. I kept the original wings but made a much larger tailplane and two little winglet connectors for the plane.

June 2nd

I secured the nose of the glider using electrical tape and kept it flying with a makeshift popsicle stick tailfin, testing out what angles and PSIs made it fly to it's best potential. The wings are starting to rip, presumably due to stress from the rubber bands, every time I launch the wings end up at the front of the glider as well.

May 30

more onshape
Laser cut! With the help of one of my teachers, I got the opportunity to use the laser cutter at my school to cut the foamcore! Laser cutting
Built initial prototype out of foamcore!

The tailfin was extremely small and so I didn't use it, and temporarily used masking tape to secure the rudder.

On the first launch attempt of my glider instead of flying, the nose detached from the fusealage and essentially became a bullet and travelling over 50 feet away.

Pictures from first construction!

(I have even more photos of the glider and a video of the laser cut in progress on my phone! I just couldn't get them to work with #cdn at the moment)

May 29

more onshape
Today I learned that laser cutters use sketches to cut and not 3d extrusions, which makes sense but I didn't intially think of that and wasted a ton of time here. The model I designed was three dimensional, so a lot of revisions had to be done in order to get the desired sketches.

May 28

more onshape

May 27th

The ideation behind this project started off in my engineering class, to end off the year we got free time and I wanted to attempt to create a glider. My teacher challenged me to construct a glider using foamcore that can fly farther than a rocket the teacher made at the same psi/angle out of a compressed air launcher.

I started work on cadding the model in OnShape today.