🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <73179@cup.portal.com> MikeSummers@cup.portal.com (Michael
- Summers) writes: 
   >[...]
   >I'd like to solicit comments on:
   >[...]
   >Airtronics Olympic II
   >[...]

I'm currently building my first plane, a 2 meter sailplane.  I started
with a Gnome that I bought from Northeast Sailplanes, but got
frustrated (8 pages of instructions, no diagrams or pictures, not the
best first timers plane) and bought a Great Planes Spirit.  I'm much
happier, it has an _excellent_ instruction manual and the parts are
easy to work with.  They have a larger version, the Spirit 100, which
got rave reviews in one of the magazines recently.  It's a lot more
expensive though ($80 vs. $35) and seemed excessive for something I'm
likely to turn into matchsticks.  Maybe my next one though.

Another plane to consider is the Airtronics Olympic 650 (though it's
also a 2 meter plane).  It got some good reviews, and is the example
plane in the book "Sailplane and Soaring Manual" by Al Doig, from R/C
Modeler Magazine.  The book has great pictures and instructions (about
building, testing, and flying [theory and practice]), if you ordered
the plans from RCM you could easily scratch build one from the book.
That plus the kit instructions (which are also supposed to be good)
should make an excellent first plane.

One nice thing about the Gnome and the Spirit are that they have a
spoiler option, which many people suggest is worth having (it seems
reasonable to me...).  I don't know if the Oly does or not.

Of course, I don't know anything about flying these things yet, so
both of these planes might be totally inappropriate (especially if
you're set on a bigger plane).  I decided that I'd be happier
successfully building something, even it if wasn't the hottest plane
in the air.  That'll come later...  People seem to thing that the
Spirit is a fine plane though.

  > I  also need recommendations on books about sailplanes (building
  >and flying) and radios. (As my kids will eventually push me into
  >power I thought I'd go with a good 4ch setup.)

The RCM book mentioned above seems worth having.  I went with a Futaba
4 Channel NBF with standard servos.

  >Thanks in advance for the help-- Mike.

g.
--
George Hartzell                                     hartzell@cs.berkeley.edu
Computer Science, 570 Evans Hall,
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720