The Colditz (ahem) Glider

[jssel]

My entry will be the Fiddler's Green Colditz Glider which was one of three free downloads just by opening an account with them. I also got the Lillenthal hang glider and World Trade Center.

Here is the cover sheet with the instruction parts layout. A little history is provided also.



A sample of the wing showing the bed sheet pattern to good effect.






This page showing off the fuselage and on the left side of the sheet is a castle backdrop for display.


So gentlemen, "boil" your musilix very well as we have fabric to cover.

Also remember the movie "The Birdmen" which was a rather loose translation of the real deal.

I will be doing most of this on the road so will post when I can.

[Dirkpitt289]

Haha, looking forward to the build Jeff

[jssel]

So we are off and running. This is entirely new to me but seems like it will be a great deal of fun.

Here are the parts cut out.



Now I can see where shaping the pieces could be a problem so I will use lengths of dowels to roll in the curves and metal straight edges to aid in bending the long runs. I might use strips of balsa to act as wing spars for added support. According to the instructions this is designed to actually fly. To that end a large scale version was printed to play at later.

As most of this will be done on the road, pictures will be taken and uploaded when I can.

I found this to be interesting.



A castle backdrop to display with the glider.

[JohnRatzenberger]

Jeff,
Dried out ball point pens make good "scribers" to help folding.

[Molly-new]

I have found that scribing the parts before cutting them out also helps.

I like the castle backdrop, gives me ideas for my plastic displays.

[SJPONeill]

Fiddlers Green often includes some 2D accessories with its models as scene setters for the displayed model...quite a clever idea...

[Titan]

Looking forward to seeing this one taking shape Jeff.

Regards
Mark

[jssel]

My apologies for the lack of updates but I have been on the road and internet connections where I am at is non-existent. But I am making good progress and so here is an update.



Excuse the poor lighting but I have the wings and tail surfaces assembled. The wingtips still need tapering and there are small cuts to make to get the curve about right. I had actually printed out two copies in case I bunged one up. I also made a couple of copies on plain paper. The plain paper copies have been cut up to allow me to put a printed interior in the cockpit so it did not appear white.

John's old ballpoint pen technique works great for scoring fold lines. I have used sanding sticks to remove burrs after the glue dries. I am using Elmer's PVA.

This shot shows the curve in the wing. There is a supporting airfoil section that the wings slide into. Pretty well thought out assembly.



Since these pictures have been taken the fuselage is assembled with only the nose portion to bring together. Arriving home Sunday afternoon and will finish thing up this coming week.

[SJPONeill]

Looking good, Jeff, A spanwise spar is always a good idea as a wing-fuselage butt join can start to sag as time goes by...not sure how it might affect the CG for your first flight though...

[jssel]

Ok. Home now and back at it. I think it is shaping up rather nicely.





It seems that the position on the tabs are all important. When you align the parts prior to gluing, the tabs point the way. As stated before I had printed out a couple of the parts in regular paper so I can patch "goobers" and line the interior so you do not see a stark white interior.

@Simon. I will be using narrow wooden coffee stir sticks to sandwich inside the struts and also add support to the wing. The actual flying version is the larger scale plans. More on that later. With 2.5 feet of snow on the ground already flying models will have to wait until I can access a gym or such with room to toss things around.

[JamesPerrin]

Great progress Jeff. Yes the one great advantages of paper models is that they are easy to take away with you as the amount of tools is small.