It's been about 10 years since I was into powered RC airplanes and I want to get back into the sport with a sailplane. I have better than beginners building skills but don't want to spend a year building.

From : Don Stackhouse

Thanks for the inquiry!

There's a lot of good choices.

If you're looking for a good built-up wooden 2-meter sailplane that builds very quickly, is very easy to fly, but with excellent performance at both high and low speeds, I can recommend our 2-meter Chrysalis. Check our website for pictures and info. It's laser cut so the parts fit is outstanding, and it has a lot of features that make building go very quickly. The instructions are all drawn on CAD, with lots of cutaway views and exploded drawings. The finished model is strong enough for a moderate winch launch, and high speed performance is competitive with some of the fiberglass 2-meters on the market today. It covers a lot of ground, comes home from WAY downwind, but will still slow down and float in the lightest of updrafts. It is responsive enough to do rolls with just rudder and elevator, but the stability is high enough for first-time beginners.

If you're looking for something a bit racier (and a lot more expensive) we have our Monarch 'D' 2-meter, an all-out competition composite ship set up for six-servo operation. It's a lot more spirited than the Chrysalis 2-meter, but still very easy to fly. It's designed for serious winch launching and all-out competition flying.

There are some other nice 2-meter kits on the market as well, from a variety of manufacturers. If you want something that bounces instead of breaking, and you're willing to give up a little performance to get it, there are some nice EPP (Expanded PolyPropylene foam) sailplanes available from a variety of manufacturers. We don't have any EPP kits of our own on the market yet, but we hope to soon. One of the more popular ones presently available is the "Highlander" by MAD Aircraft. I haven't flown one myself, but I hear they are a good performer.

Then of course there's hand-launch. I don't recommend HLG's for absolute beginners, because they're more sensitive to building technique, they're a bit harder to see, they respond quicker, and from a hand-launch you don't really get enough altitude to practice basic flight control skills. Of course that last one can easily be overcome with a small hi-start for launching, then you can progress to hand-launching once you get comfortable with basic flying technique. Once you get to that stage, there's no better way to learn fundamental air-reading and thermalling skills than with a good HLG! There are a number of EPP hand-launch models available, but I don't recommend them for anywhere outside of very strong thermal areas like southern California and Texas, the ones I've studied just don't have the performance to do well in weaker lift. You need something with a lot of range, but also excellent turning ability and very low sink rate once you do find lift, and also a lot of "feedback" (i.e.: very visible pitch angle and airspeed changes or bank angle changes) to tell you that it's found a thermal.

In your case it sounds like your building skills for wooden airplanes are good, so our Chrysalis HLG might be a good choice for a very good model at a budget price. Although it's a wooden built-up model, it's very quick and simple to build, with laser-cut parts that go together very quickly.

If you have a little more to spend for something still very simple to fly, but with even better performance and even quicker to build, you might try our Monarch 'D-lite'. This is an all-composite, highly pre-fabbed model that is fully capable of doing very well at Nationals-caliber contests, but still very simple to build and fly. For light winds (8-10 knots or less) and weak lift it's one of the best performing models available anywhere. It still does well in higher winds. There's a photo tour of this kit in the "Product Info" section on our website.

I live in South Georgia which is very flat - will there be enough thermal activity? What airplane do you recomend? Thanks for your help!

Over flat country, the lift you usually get to fly in IS from thermals. Thermals are the result of uneven heating of the earth's surface by the sun. Certain surfaces such as plowed fields, infields of baseball diamonds, or paved areas get hotter in the sun than places like woods and lakes. The air above the warmer patches of ground gets heated more than the surrounding air, and so it begins to rise. As it rises it begins to cool, but because the air around it is also cooler (and therefore still at a lower temperature), the parcel of air continues to rise. Eventually it may get high enough that its temperature reaches the dew point, whereupon the water vapor it is carrying begins to condense into water droplets, forming a cumulus cloud. When you look out at the sky and see it is full of little puffy, popcorn-shaped clouds, you'll know that each of them marks the location of a thermal. So tell me, do you ever see lots of little puffy, popcorn-shaped cumulus clouds in south Georgia? ;-)

Even if you don't see cumulus clouds, there still may be thermals. Do you ever have days with "light and variable" wind? Those are caused by warm bubbles of rising air breaking loose from the ground, and air rushing in from all directions to fill in the space under them. Those sudden little wind shifts point the way to the thermals. One world champion flier (Joe Wurts) makes it a point to take his shirt off when thermal flying, because it makes it much easier to feel those little wind shifts. I've watched him fly, and he has some of the most remarkable air-reading skills I've ever seen.

Thermals occur a surprising amount of the time, even at night. Remember those naturally cooler places like woods and lakes? As the sun gets low, the warmer patches of ground tend to cool off faster, so that now the woods will be warmer and you can now find lift where earlier in the day was on;y sink. As the woods begin to cool, the lakes now become the warmest things around, so at night there is often weak but large areas of lift over bodies of water.

This is the same phenomenon that drives the on and off-shore breezes in coastal areas. In the day the land is warmer, the air over the land is rising, so the breeze blows in from the water to fill in under the rising air. At night the land cools quickly, the water is now warmer, so the air over the water is rising and the breeze blows out from the land to fill in under it.

Thermals are where you find them, and if you know how to look, you can find them almost anywhere. We've even found thermals on a heavily overcast day during a light rain! All you need are some slight variations in the local air temperature. For really weak lift you need good flying skills AND a lightweight model with excellent performance; our 2-meter and HLG Chrysalis kits, our Monarch 'D-lite', and for experienced fliers our Wizard 'Lite' all qualify for this requirement. I'd bet you have plenty of lift in your area if you learn when and where to look for it!

Don Stackhouse
DJ Aerotech