Rockets

Arcade

Aery

    FAQ's

    Tips

What's New

Other sites:

MASA

MRN

Aery Tips

Wood

• Aery is designed around using one (or more) sheets of balsa for the flying surfaces and a stick (usually spruce) for the fuselage.

Glue

• In the sessions that I've run, we've always used hobby-type cyanoacrylate (CA) glues.  These are like "super glues" - very strong and fast drying.  I recommend a medium-viscosity CA.  You can also get an accelerator ("kicker") to spray on these glues to make them set-up instantly.

• You can certainly use regular wood glue.  It will just take a lot longer to dry.

Nose Weights

• I've used the stick-on lead weights that you can buy at a hobby store.  Sometimes though, it's better to scrape the adhesive off of these weights and glue them onto the fuselage with CA.

Reinforcement

• The wing popping off the fuselage has been a problem in hard landings.  I've taken to using a piece of 3/4" width woven nylon cloth as reinforcement.  Center it and run a piece along the fuselage/wing joint on each side.  Then, glue it in place using CA.

Glider Improvements for Better Flights

• Glue or tape pieces of thin cardboard or plastic onto the glider to act as ailerons, elevator, and rudder (at trailing edges of wing, horizontal and vertical tails).  Then, you can slightly bend these pieces to help trim your glider and direct it in flight.

• Add dihedral to the wing tips by making the outer portions of the wing angle upward.  Cut off the outer third of each wing half.  Now, sand a slight angle into the the cut-off end of each wing.  Glue the wingtips back on - they should now angle upward.  Important - make sure each wingtip angles upward by the same amount!  (make the height of the wingtip above the main wing about equal to 1/3 of the length of the piece that you cut off)

• Make the wing moveable - invent a way to hold it on using small rubber bands such that you can still slide it fore and aft on the fuselage stick.

• Sand all balsa surfaces smooth.  Round the leading edge of all balsa surfaces and "point" the trailing edge

• Make a hook at the front of the glider.  Then, make a "slingshot" out of a large rubber band.  This can let you get greater altitude than just throwing the glider.

• When you fly a glider for the first time in a while, recheck the center of gravity location.  Balsa wood can absorb moisture from the air - changing its weight.

• .No matter what you do, these will never be really high performance gliders!

Decoration

• Give out a pail of colored markers and let your students decorate their gliders.