Midair,

The items you talk about are the latest building techniques in Open combat. Very simple and very durable for minimal expense. The rods I've been using are 1/8" - 5/32" diameter solid fiberglass. Fiber glass is stronger then carbon fiber, not as stiff but considerably cheaper. They can be purchased on line from these:

www.intowind.com (upto 48" rods) approx. $1.00/each
www.kitebuilder.com (upto 72" rods, the way to go if you building long wings) 72 inchers approx. $2.00/each.

Ripstop nylon or plain nylon can be found at most fabric stores. Walmart usually has plain nylon on the $1.00 rack, can't be picky about colors but for a buck you can't go wrong. Most people have been using water based polyuerathane from the hardware store. 10 dollars for a quart, which will do about 12 wings.

The foam is high-load from either Dow or Dow Corning. Insulation dealers usually carry it. The 40 psi crush seems to be the best combination of weight and strength.

Mike Fredericks at [email protected] cuts CNC wing cores for a very reasonable price if you're not familiar with burning, I mean cutting foam cores.

There is a lot of information @ www.rccombat.com under the Topic Forum about these topics. If you do a search on any of these topics you'll be reading for hours...

Good luck...