02-15-2009, 08:49 AM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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Another boost-glider type (odd by today's standards) that came and went pretty quickly in the 1960s was the Mini-Bird, which was developed by a model rocketeer named Ward Conley. Like many rear-motor B/Gs and some front-motor B/Gs, it ejected its motor.
To envision what a Mini-Bird looked like: Imagine a scaled-down Estes Astron Alpha made using BT-20 or BT-30 tubing, with the body tube cut off just ahead of the fins and with the nose cone glued into the end of the much-shortened body tube. One of the three fins is lengthened in span by an inch or so, and being slightly heavier than the others it hangs down vertically as a vertical stabilizer (a ventral fin) during the glide, while the other two fins serve as wings. The Mini-Bird was sort of an upside-down version of the Centuri Black Widow's gliding booster.
Using a streamer-recovered 13 mm motor adapter mount (or such an 18 mm mount in a BT-50 or #10 tubing size Mini-Bird), this design would be "NAR-kosher" for competition. While it isn't a very good glider, getting as much "hang time" as possible out of its stubby fin/wings would be an interesting challenge, and the rear-ejecting motor mount would make tangled-up-streamer-and-glider "Red Baron" DQ'ed descents very rare if not non-existent.
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