Slope Gliding an Aerobird? I never thought of that.
Do you spend most of the time with the motor off, or are you just flying over a slope. How much gliding do you do vs. power flying? I am REALLY interested in this.
I have not tried it, but I saw a post that said if you put a shim at the back of the wing, like a popsicle stick, that the wing would penetrate wind better with less lift characteristic. Of course that is what you would want in a 20 MPH wind. I have not tried it yet, but it seems to make sense.
In 25 MPH winds, even if the foam tail could take it, the servos may not be strong enough to operate the tail surfaces. Or, perhaps the monofilament control lines are stretching. If you replaced them with heavier line, or perhaps Dacron, this problem would be eliminated.
If you have pictures, or videos of the bird slope gliding I would love to see them.
The idea of taking two wings and taping them together might make more sense for you than it does for me. It should be much stronger and would definitely add weight.
As stated above, I plan to take two wings that are creased on the opposite ends of the wing and bond them with CA. Then I will seal the edge with packing tape, or perhaps glass reinforced tape.
This should have a similar undercamber to a single wing but present a thicker wing profile. Hopefully it will make the wing stiffer.
I tried to reinforce a wing once by taping square balsa, about 1/4 X 1/4 the length of the wing on each side. I left the part that crosses the body alone. The plane flew fine, but the wing folded at the body during an extreme maneuver. I think the weight of the balsa was just too much for it.
The beauty of hits plane is that is can take so much crash punishment that you can afford to experiment, especially if you have reinforced the motor mount, as I have. Nose crashes don't even phase my plane anymore.
Keep the info coming and post some of those pictures.
