Going retro

Remember the ‘good old’ days?
You spent all winter building a new plane, and by spring you hoped it survived the first few flights.

Actually, what was so good about that?? – most of us like to spend time at the airfield, flying and meeting with fellow club members.
When you put together an ARF model, it is usually done within a week, and the testflight phase is not about ‘will it fly’, but how well does it handle and how does it suit my flying style.

I have a passion for gliders, high performing, sleek wings, minimal fuselages, all molded in carbon, kevlar and lots of other high tech stuff. Recently it has been mostly scale gliders, either for aerotowing or electrified self launching gliders.

Last year i attended several aerotow meetings. Most pilots were flying sleek modern gliders, but there were also a few ‘oldies’ that caught my eye. Beatiful wooden scale gliders, very realistic looking, and surely also very fun to thermal with, slow and low, not high and fast as you tend to fly the high performing gliders.

Not many ARF wooden gliders on the market, and as I like to build (time permitting), I began looking into the ‘almost ready to build’ market. Kits with CNC cut parts is a big timesaver, first you save time needed to source materials, and second you save time by not having to cut all formers, wing ribs etc.

I decided on a Göppingen GÖ4 glider from the late thirties, not exactly sleek and certainly not with a minimal fuselage. It was a trainer glider with the pilots sitting side by side, so the fuselage is quite roomy. In short it is so ugly that you can only love it.

Being scale 1:3.5 it will be a perfect match for most of the tow planes around, and also a size that is reasonable to handle in the hobbyshop and transporting to the airfield.

Building started right after Christmas, and as i make sure to put in a few hours nearly every day, it is progressing well.

Towplane will be a reincarnated Taxi. The first Taxi crashed beyond repair last year, but the setup with Z65 motor, A123 cells and lots of charging capacity had really proven itself at several aerotow meetings, so this will also be the setup this year.