Birdy Paper Glider
Building the fuselage of the Birdy is straightforward. Here a butterfly fold (above left) and cutting of the fuselage double halves is performed. Next, another butterfly fold and cut of the four nose pieces (above right) for one Birdy.
The tail pieces (below left) with leading edge reinforcement, are similar to the wing in construction. Completed fuselage (below right) with tab and nose pieces glued into position.
throw your arm out of its socket”, use the rubber band. This is not rocket science; any rubber band that is about the length of the fuselage will do, (which is, by the way, about 18 centimeters or 7 inches long), as long as it is not as weak as chewing gum or as stiff as a tire.
In flight And you may wonder… How do the
Birdies fly? … at the end of the day, that’s what really matters.
For a paper glider that is inexpensive and is built in one hour or so, I can say they all
fly pretty well. In open air, with virtually no wind, the maximum distance I have covered with any version (using the catapult) is 85 meters (about 250 feet). They are really sen- sitive to any correction in the rudder, eleva- tor or ailerons, and as aeronautical wisdom dictates (and the Birdy is no exception) “small changes, big effects!” The Classic and U-tail Birdies as expect-
ed, after such a well known configuration, display a predictable, smooth glide; they are the easy ones. The V-tail sometimes has a nice subtle flat slide during level flight in response to a mild breeze, because of the
merging of pitch and yaw in one single structure.
Perhaps the most challenging and inter- esting is the T-tail Birdy. I believe the differ- ence with respect to the other versions is be- cause an elevated stabilizer encounters a clean air flow, whereas the low stabilizer configuration receives an airflow already disrupted by the wing.
I have observed that the T-tail Birdy is more responsive to elevator trimming, and has a more steady, “solid” flight, provided you keep the zero-to-zero angle between wing and stabilizer. But beware, if such
The “T” tail rudder gains some strength due to a Z fold reinforcement (above left) within its construction. Dotted lines printed on the plans help with alignment.
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The close up seen here (above right) as an example, is for the T-tail rudder version of the Birdy.
APRIL 2013
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