Hitec Hawkeye Foam Glider Fun

On recent visit to my local hobby shop Everything Hobby in Rochester Minnesota one of the employees pointed to a small foam glider hanging in a window and thought I needed one. It comes as a free flight glider that I think would be great for kids to throw around because the EPO foam normally just bounces no matter how hard you crash it. Right away I had thoughts of installing light radio control gear in it for slope soaring. It turned out the display model was the only one they had but more would be coming in.

When I returned to the hobby shop I was also shown an electric RC version of the glider that comes with a brushless motor, ESC, and servos. It is setup with rudder control and I wanted to use ailerons so purchased the free flight version. I planned to fly it free flight to start with anyway.

Assembly is so quick, just slide the wing and stabilizer into the fuselage. I threw it around outside of the house over still snow covered ground. It had a pretty good glide for a glider with a fat fuselage and weighing about 54 grams according to my scale. 

Last evening the wind was rather light and the snow was gone so I tried more hand launches in a park. After a few hand launches which went a fair distance I thought I would try a discus style launch. Spinning around and whipping it into the air by grasping one wingtip and releasing got the glider pretty high, but the glider would stall at the top and head straight into the ground. There was never any damage, it would just bounce. 

After bending the surfaces some and adjusting my launch technique I had some flights where the glider recovered at top of launch and went into a pretty good glide. It seemed best to discus launch so that it never climbed at a steep angle. Like most toy model airplanes there appears to be insufficient dihedral.  

I would like to try to catapult launch the glider free flight before the RC conversion is attempted. If you cannot find this glider locally, a check online will find many sources.


Bill Kuhl
http://www.ideas-inspire.com

Additonal

Hitec Website

My Last Launch Discus Style