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Got most of this build done but wasn’t able to start this build thread due to health issues. Recuperating right now so I’ll be posting as much as I can manage at any one sitting (all I have are photos at the moment). Hoping the build proves interesting…or at least entertaining.
From the concept pads at Farside Research comes this unlikely flying thing. It’s one of those mind sims that hovers on the border between “Not even close to being airworthy” and “It works but no one knows exactly why yet”. This is more an experiment to see which side of that dividing line it falls on.
Wasn’t sure if this box kite-like glider attempt should’ve gone into the Oddroc or Rocket Boosted Gliders forum sections. Gliding Oddroc or Oddroc Glider? While it may have gotten more traction in the Oddroc section, I decided that first and foremost it’s a glider, albeit an odd one.
I’m sure as a kid you built one of these straw and hoop gliders. You didn’t care about how or why it worked, just about how fun it was to watch something you made yourself out of a drinking straw, paper, and glue actually defy gravity as it soared across the room.
I still have no clear idea of the exact physics behind how an essentially “wingless” plane sans any airfoil can stay aloft.
Anyway, during an idle moment years ago, I regressed enough to build one of those straw/hoop gliders out of curiosity. Still couldn’t figure out how it worked, so my curiosity remained unquenched. So an even weirder thought hit me: would a different shape, like a triangle, still work? It did!
I resolved that one day I’d try to actually fabricate a full-scale triangular version that was rocket-launched. Well, those two straw gliders sat on a dusty shelf for about 7 years, but inspired again by the Ring Hawk glider I’d built 4 years ago following plans in an old Nov/Dec 2003 Sport Rocketry article, I decided to resurrect exploring an oddroc triangular “airfoil” glider-on-a-stick like the straw version—but upscaled, of course.
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