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Aero-Naut Sail Speedy

Wayne

Wayne

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Staff member
A while back I spotted an inexpensive foam glider on the Aero-Naut catalog and thought I needed to see if it is any good.I think this design has been around for a long time, but have never seen one. So I ordered in a case of them and our buddy Scott was nice enough to build it for us at one of our build nights. (Warning, come to a build night at Aloft without anything to build and we will put you to work.)

It is an easy build, mostly adding in some spars and some wood here and there. The wing is a single piece. Foam is EPS. It builds out light, 14.7 ounce AUW.
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For me the appeal of this plane was low price budget sloper. So we outfit it with the finest in cheap 9 gram servos as we wanted to try this as a true budget plane. We powered it with a rather old 4 cell NiMH 1300 pack. Probably put a small 2S lipo and an old ESC to act as a BEC for future flights.. Again on the idea of keeping her cheap.. The NiMH pack is too old and tired for reliable use.

The build was straight forward and we followed the english instructions. Heck, she even comes with sandpaper in the box. We used mostly Foam Cure glue and some 15 minute epoxy for the wing mounts and the control horns. No tricks to the build. We needed a small bag of lead to make the factory suggested CG with the battery we picked.

Maiden flight went great. Wish I had some video, but she flew out and was a lot of fun to fly, she was a bit nose heavy with the CG set to the spar location, so landed and moved things around to move the CG back to the rear of the spar and she was happy here. Passed her around to several other pilots for their thoughts. While she is not extreme in any way, she doesn't seem to have any handling concerns either.

I mixed in a bit of spoileron (aileron up) to assist in landing, and this worked out well. Our local field has a small landing area, and the spoilers helped nail the landings.

I was pleasantly surprised that the rudder was very effective on this plane, more so than I expected. This made aerobatics a more fun. I didn't have a ton of throw on any of the surfaces and she was flying light on her 48" wings, but she was happy to do all of the aerobatics I asked of her. Pretty good roll rate, nice clean loops, and decent inverted. With the rudder you could get a slow snap roll out of her. She turned a respectable range of speed that ranged from nice and slow to decently quick for foam weighing this little.

She is happy to fly in a very small space if needed, I always like foam that can do that. I will be playing this more in future flights to see if I can do a series of aerobatics in a 10 foot cube on the slope. This is good fun and hard to find a plane that can do it, but think this one will work. :)

Not bad for a plane that costs under $70 and is easy to build. Did we mention it is German.. LOL
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A quick word about EPS foam - Yeah, this is that cruddy EPS foam. It is not durable like the EPP or EPO planes you may be accustomed to, but it is not all bad. EPS is is stiffer and lighter, but it picks up dents over time. It would be a good idea to put some tape on the leading edge of the wing and bottom of the fuselage if you are landing in rocks or weeds/bushes. The good thing is EPS is very easy to repair and fill. Should you break the plane, just clean things up and glue it back together. A little epoxy or Foam Cure will get you going. Foam Cure will take all night to cure, so epoxy is best for quick fixes. Avoid CA glues as they will melt the foam. Same with most all spray paints. The foam safe CA and paint should still be tested as I have seen some of them still melt EPS foams. You can fill big dents with light weight wall filler with great results. If you want to go crazy you would fiberglass over the foam, but probably not worth the trouble.

I think the low price makes sense for this plane. She will not be a combat plane, but kept light I think you will have a very enjoyable sport slope glider that may surprise you.

We should have them up on the site soon. (Will try to get better pictures next time she is out.. Hopefully no fog then..)
 
Wayne,

Neat looking glider and certainly the price looks good. Did you also mention some balsa kits from Aero-Naut recently? Will these go up on the site with this foam glider?
Hank
 
I have had success with putting a little bit of gorilla glue foaming in a dent and taping around the leading edge as kind of a form for the glue to expand against. Sand the excess off.
Nice looking plane! does the wing come off and how easy is it?
 
Hank,

Yes, we have the Tripples and they are getting added to the site.. Also a bunch of their free flight stuff for fun.
 
Actually, we have the Lilenthal 40 on order with them, just not sure when we will get them in. Totally agree, it was one of the planes on my must have list. We also ordered the power pack for them, and those are in stock.
74deb4c0ad.jpg


In a day or so we should see the Triples added to the site, we are very pleased with the kits, they have a build manual that is the most complete I have seen for the hobby. It is in German, but google translate on your phone makes quick work of that issue. :) Good wood, good cutting, etc. One of the staff here will be building one up, so we will have first hand reports of how it all goes. (Triples get their name as the same fuselage can be used with 3 different wings, here is a picture of the thermal and the speed wings.)
0a16bb0a65.jpg
 
Were GWS warbirds EPS or something else? I recall the foam was more brittle than EPS $5 kmart/walmart glider. I think that's the main reason EPS gets a bad rap.
 
Foam qualities can range all over the place. This plane coming from Germany appears to be a pretty nice form of EPS, but it is still EPS.

Yes, the GWS warbirds were EPS, they tended to be pretty low density and on the weaker side of the EPS scale. I think the goal for those planes was WEIGHT reduction and decent scale looks for low bucks. They were designed around NiMH battery and brushed motors. They HAD to keep the airframes as light as possible. Later years they seemed to pick up the foam density some for better strength.
 
Expanded Poly Styrene (EPS.) One of the great features of molding with foam is that one can control the density of the product. This foam is a lot stiffer than the junk EPO/EPP foams we see today. GWS warbirds where molded in EPS these were great low cost warbirds. Light weight as they could fly on a Mabuchi 370 canned motor and small 7 cell nicads. Another added benefit was that they were easy to repair with non-solvent catalyzed glues ( I liked 15 minute epoxy and polyurethane). Paint would actually adhere to the surface. The only knock I recall about the GWS was that many of the other thin sheet molding were not very tolerant to use (cowls cracked and distorted in the heat of the sun).

Now Graupner towards the end had a real nice molding process that resulted in the EPS molded surface having a very dense skin.

The K-mart gliders where molded with much denser EPS. As a result they didn't fly well but might last to the end of the day keeping the kids amused and out from under the parent's feet for a day.

With EPS don't use solvent based paints. Don't use glues that rely on evaporation for drying and use only foam safe CA glues sparingly (don't allow it to smoke, this makes heat and will melt the EPS).

Unlike today's modern EPO model, with EPS it is possible to actually get a nice finish on the EPS (EPS is so much more thermally stable than the gawd awful EPO). Also paint will stick to EPS and pass many a tape pull test. Again something that EPO can't do. EPS is much stiffer than EPO. This means that it will fly much better (No wing or surfaces flapping in the breeze).

Another added benefit of EPS models is that they can be used as the core for a fiberglass layup. This opens up all sorts of possibilities. Again something that the modern EPO model isn't suited for.

Edit: Saying much the same thing as Wayne
My GWS F-15 with brushless motor appears to be made with EPS foam that is much denser than the GWS warbirds of the past. This is as a result of modern motor and lipo batteries.
 
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The Sail Speedy has a second version, the Twin Speedy, which has twin motors on the wing in a pusher configuration, for flatlanders. I have an earlier version of this airplane, called the "Turn-On", which is one of my favorite airplanes. Kept light and powered by two 1806 quadcopter motors with 1.3 3S Lipo, it has good vertical and about a ten minute aerobatic flight time. I'm not overly impressed by the yaw authority of the v-tail, but differential throttle mixed from the rudder stick more than makes up for that! This makes for very effective stall turns from a dead stop. One nice feature is that twins with counter-rotating props don't exhibit any torque or p-factor in normal flight, as in the initial pull up to vertical in a maneuver (there is some torque reaction when you use differential throttle, though). The airfoil is compatible with largish outside loops and the aircraft will do a very tall vertical eight. In all, a nicely aerobatic airplane with an easy hand launch (part throttle) and a low landing speed. It encourages throttle management and is only flown at full throttle in climbs.

Aloft does not list the powered version, but it should be an easy conversion from the Sail Speedy if you have building skills. The Twin Speedy has a wing with molded-in motor nacelles on top of the wing. (The Twin Speedy and Turn-On use ferrite motors buried in the nacelles, which is unnecessarily heavy. I glued firewalls to the back of the nacelles in my Turn-On.) To convert the sailplane version, add firewalls at the trailing edge (above the wing) supported by 1/32 in plywood triangles going forward into slots in the upper surface. The centerline of the motors on the Turn-On are 21 cm apart. Mounting screws go through the firewall from the front. Devise some sort of fairing in front of the firewall, leaving the motors in the breeze. I have a similar firewall installation on another foam airplane--the LIDL glider-- and it has held up well. The rest is creating places for wires to run and an unfortunately complicated wiring harness. Note that the fuselage already has depressions behind the wing to give prop clearance--these are a good place to put cooling air exhausts for the fuselage.

The plane is EPS, with the advantages and disadvantages that have already been discussed. I have a lot of hours on mine, and some major repairs, but it is still flying. The fuselage has a good wooden reinforcement in the tail boom, and the interior of the Sail Speedy has been reinforced compared to the Turn-On. However reinforcement by small carbon rod under the v-tail extending to overlap the wooden tail boom reinforcement is a good idea, and I would probably do the same thing in other places where there is not good continuity in the structure's reinforcements. Tape on the bottom regardless of where you land. Be careful of the wing tips.

If there is interest I will write more about the wiring for a twin.
 
Thanks for sharing! I don't think the Twin is available anymore, so conversion may be the only option. We will be adding some 1407 motors to the site soon, they would be a good option too. :)
 
I was holding off on buying one of these but then I saw it said 1 left and I pulled the trigger. I think I’ll build it as a glider first then maybe add a motor and folding prop later on. I’ll do a separate build thread when I get started.

Hank
 
Looking forward to getting my hands on a Thermik kit. Just a gorgeous bird, video shows it to fly as good, or better, than it looks.
Really getting into combo sport/thermal EP gliders this season, you should see my BoT loop into a rudder roll. Leaves me in wonderment that a big 'ol thermalator can be so graceful and move so well through the air.
Though not a thermalator, my SERA DS-X is a sky scalpel. I'm gone before the air knew I was there.

Fun stuff, man.
 
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