Step 8: Final thoughts
Here's the basics of control surfaces, just so you know. (Pardon me if I don't state any of this completely correctly, but you'll get the idea well enough to know how to manipulate your little jet plane.)
The ailerons generally move in opposite directions, one up, the other down, which turns the plane left or right. The elevators always move together, up or down, to make the plane go up or down. The rudder swings the tail of the plane left or right. I wouldn't mess with the rudder on this, because it really doesn't do much to these as far as I can tell.
To begin, try to get your plane to do a straight, level glide when launched by hand. To do this, I suggest keeping the ailerons in the neutral position and the elevator tabs bent up equally about 1/8".
Once you have a decent glide, experiment with your plane to see what you can get it to do. Wild loops and barrel rolls are easy to make happen, but slow sweeping rolls turns and steady glides are much more tricky! We found that throwing the planes was almost as much fun as launching them.
This was a fun little project, and I suspect my kids and I will be building and flying these for a while.
Thanks for looking at this. Let me know what you think!
The ailerons generally move in opposite directions, one up, the other down, which turns the plane left or right. The elevators always move together, up or down, to make the plane go up or down. The rudder swings the tail of the plane left or right. I wouldn't mess with the rudder on this, because it really doesn't do much to these as far as I can tell.
To begin, try to get your plane to do a straight, level glide when launched by hand. To do this, I suggest keeping the ailerons in the neutral position and the elevator tabs bent up equally about 1/8".
Once you have a decent glide, experiment with your plane to see what you can get it to do. Wild loops and barrel rolls are easy to make happen, but slow sweeping rolls turns and steady glides are much more tricky! We found that throwing the planes was almost as much fun as launching them.
This was a fun little project, and I suspect my kids and I will be building and flying these for a while.
Thanks for looking at this. Let me know what you think!
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Not NiceInappropriateSpamactimm
says:
Jul 21, 2011. 11:53 AMReply
As, in your own words, the rudder doesn't do much, you could simply make the rear wing slightly larger and put about a 30 degree bend in it. This would still give you a certain amount of directional stability and keep you from stressing about trying to tweak the rudder about.
57
seamster (author)
in reply to Jul 21, 2011. 1:00 PMReplyDefinitely, a v-tail would simplify the build even more. Good tip!
1
Delo97
says:
Jul 19, 2011. 7:05 AMReply
This is a GREAT idea! I don't think I'll build the base, because that would be expensive, but the jet/glider is REALLY good, and I'll be probably make some of them out of cereal boxes and wood sticks using your template, and launch them by hand.
chrispix
in reply to Jul 21, 2011. 12:12 PMReply
The parts for the launcher should cost less than $10 at Home Depot.
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