UberZogster's fun: Gentle Lady and how I got here

I started flying in March after watching some guys on the local slope. The first plane that I purchased was a Zagi 5C because I wanted to fly slope and I could get it in a kit with a Transmitter. While I was waiting for the Zagi to arrive I visited multiple hobby shops and everyone kept saying something along the lines of "You are going to be hiking all over that hill if you try to teach yourself how to fly on the slope. You should get a Radian and learn how to fly with that. Trying to learn on the slope would be a big mistake." My Dad was with me when visiting one of the shops and decided that I had better listen to the "experts" and I ended up with a Radian.

The first time I flew the Radian didn't go so well. I ended up crashing pretty hard when the wind decided to go from 1-3mph to 15-20mph. The saddle above the wing snapped, chunks were broken off of the root on each wing, one wing had a pretty big crack about 8" out from the root, and the nose was shorter than it had been. I researched how to fix the nose with boiling water and glued the rest together with gorilla glue. While the Radian was airworthy again I was a little hesitant to try flying it again and the Zagi had arrived so why not put it together.

It took me about a week to assemble the Zagi. I decided that I didn't care what the "experts" had to say I was going to go throw this off the hill and see what happened. I went up to the local slope, threw the Zagi off and............ didn't crash! I ended up flying for about 6 hours. After the initial jitters wore off I was able to do some loops and a little inverted flight. I was STOKED! All the way home I kept thinking "Hah the "experts" didn't know what they were talking about. I just needed something with ailerons."

After flying for a month or so I went up to the slope to find almost no wind. "Okay" I thought "This is why I always bring the Radian." While I hadn't flown it since the crash I felt I could handle it better now and I figured out a couple of things that I did wrong the first time around. I assembled the Radian, threw it out, hit the throttle for a short climb, and started making a big zigzag looking for lift. While I didn't see any thermals exactly I gained a ton of altitude, it was like the entire sky was going up. I sat down, relaxed, and let everything go. Nothing mattered but the beautiful day, fresh air, my dog, and the plane. I ended up specking out. MAN what a thrill, I was hooked.

Fast forward to the middle of June. I decided to look up a local glider club because I could use some guidance. If the entire sky isn't going up I'm not either. The school that we fly at doesn't allow motors of any kind so I can't use my Radian.:censored: Okay, the club has a loaner easy glider that I can use while I get something I can use. I'll admit I have a tendency to go a little overboard (okay maybe a lot overboard) at times and RC planes was no exception. I wasn't allowing myself to purchase any RC stuff in June because I had been going overboard the previous months. July first rolls around and I start trying to contact an individual to purchase one of his kits. He has a very good reputation and produces the kit that everyone in my club recommended. After a month with multiple e-mails and phone calls I have not received any communication back. Apparently it is too hard to respond to an e-mail or return a call (he has been on RCGroups). I am disappointed because I was looking forward to this plane. Well now I just lost a month and a half and I really need to build something because this loaner is driving me crazy. I ordered a Mini Bird of Time kit from isthmusmodels.com, sweet I finally have a plane on the way.:)

I was looking around and kept seeing people building the Gentle Lady as their first glider. This got me thinking "Maybe I should build a Gentle Lady and see what I can learn from it. Everything probably isn't going to go together like a Zaerotech kit." As I was going on to my weekend I remembered seeing a GL kit at my LHS. Thursday (my weekend) I picked the kit up and set up my building area. Friday I was able to start building before work.

My first impressions of the kit are that it could be better, it could also be a lot worse, the quality is definitely better than the Dynaflight Bird of Time kit I have. "Laser cut parts" is a stretch for most of the parts, I would call them laser scored for most and laser outlined for others. The cut only goes half way through the material on most of the parts. Luckily the wing ribs are fully cut so I won't be messing those up trying to finish cutting them.

Friday I assembled the horizontal stabilizer without any issues.

Just getting started.

Finished, hey that wasn't so bad!

Saturday I worked on the fin and rudder. I was annoyed when I ran out of material for the diagonal braces with one left to go.:mad: I was even being super careful to not waste any. I was working with the long sticks and had barely any waste. It isn't like I cut a bunch of pieces a half inch longer that needed and had a bunch of scrap. I scrounged around in my BOT kit and found a piece that would work. Let's hope I don't run out on that now too.

The piece I was short.

The finished pieces before sanding.

Sunday I sanded the H stab and shaped the elevator, sanded the fin and rudder, and started to assemble the fuse by gluing the sides together.

One thing that I wasn't expecting as I haven't worked with balsa this light before was how quickly it would sand. I also didn't really think about parts not being quite the same thickness during assembly as I could "always sand everything flat". This may or may not have been a problem other than the rudder training edge was the thickest part and also harder wood. When I sanded everything flat this didn't want to sand down and I ended up reducing the overall thickness by about half.:eek: I may make another fin and rudder because of this. I'm not 100% sure yet but I have been toying with the idea.