Geodetic Glider

A half-metre wing-span model of a Waco assault glider, as used by US forces in WWII.

I'd set my students the challenge of designing a glider, in groups, which could be 3d printed and then launched fro a bungee catapult - it was a design and project management exercise rather than a flight challenge, but we encountered a problem which proved quite difficult to overcome.

Printing in PLA, the gliders all came out very heavy, which lead to a very high wing-loading and, as a result, very poor flight performance. Although I tried to improve matters by allowing ever larger wing-spans to try to reduce wing-loading, the majority of the designs the students were coming up with were essentially solid structures, so the wing-loading stayed more or less the same - there proved to be practical limits to how big a wing-span you could go for and achieve a rigid structure without resorting to glue, too...

This is an experiment in creating a frame-structured glider, which can then be covered w