Heron

Mine originally started life as a rocket glider for A motors, but on its first flight the ejection charge blew the pod off. I had initially thought I'd redo the pod, but with a B Boost Glide Duration event coming up, I repaired the remnants by adding a pop pod made from a BT-20 and attached by Apogee Universal Glider Pod Hooks. Seven inches of ~250# Kevlar and fourteen inches of ¹/8th inch wide elastic tie the Apogee parabolic nose cone and Custom streamer to the thrust ring. Simple.

Dr. Gregorek's typical values for the basic boost glider aren't that different for A and B motors, varying only by about 15% or so. Still, this glider certainly looks small when attached to the pod. That and the blue nose cone led me to name her after the bent-necked big blue bird of the marsh. Decalage is a full ¹/16th of an inch, so she recovers from a dive very well, but loops on boost. Most folks claim that the best location for the thickest part of the wing should be between 25% and 35% of cord. While that's probably true for many full-size gliders, I think it needs to be closer to the leading edge for these slower, smaller versions. I put mine @ 20%.

The glider hook matched the weight of the lost rocket pod so well that I didn't have to trim her a bit. Final mass of the glider is 12.7 grams, with the pod bringing the all-up dry weight to 22.1 grams.

Her first flight on an A8-3 boosted straight, but looped during coast. She was pointed almost straight up when ejection occurred, and while the pod recovered undamaged, she dropped her streamer. The glider took a while to get stabilized, and does seem to need a bit more nose weight, but she flew fine and recovered undamaged as well. What I thought was a need for more nose weight was winds; her next flight on the B4-2 ejected at the top of the loop and she stabilized almost immediately. She flew in rather small circles for about two minutes, and the light winds only messed with her a bit. She flared just before touchdown, a perfect, spectacular flight!

Her next two flights were in competition on the B4-2. The first only lasted a Buck seven, but the second was a Buck fifty-nine, very nice. I figure she hit a downdraft on the first flight, but I'll take the result; it won the event, and at a Regional to boot, sweet. The sport scale judge saw the bird afterwards and commented that I'd done a good job on the airfoil; I almost didn't have the heart to tell him it was originally aileron material. Her next flight was a sport outing in an A8-3 which flew great, separation occurring at the end of a ¾ loop, and three big circles before she touched down. The pod was lost in high grass for about ten minutes, but was eventually found.

Her next flight was on a B6-2, and she didn't loop this time, but spun to altitude. She ejected prior to apogee, and after falluing a few dozen feet when the pod streamer wrapped around a wing briefly, she pulled out of her dive, settled into a glide and started turning nicely. Winds were light and there were light thermals, but these combined with her higher altitude to get her a duration of 3 minutes and 20 seconds. More than enough for the NARTREK Silver Glide Recovery requirement, but I wound up chasing her about ¹/3rd of a mile at a slow trot, pleading with her to come down. That, folks, was her last flight on a B motor.