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Is foam gliders better then a wood glider in weight but does it stay afloat longer?

Design and quality of the plane matters soooo much more than the material you use. Also, read the previous year's glider threads please... all of the information is probably on there too.

builderguy135 wrote:Design and quality of the plane matters soooo much more than the material you use. Also, read the previous year's glider threads please... all of the information is probably on there too.

Well, not necessarily. Wood is usually the main part of gliders, to prevent stall from lighter gliders made out of foam or paper or similar materials. Foam could be used to increase the surface area of the wing or something similar, but unless you have a good way to counteract stall, I would not suggest building with a relatively large amount of foam.

isotelus wrote:

builderguy135 wrote:Design and quality of the plane matters soooo much more than the material you use. Also, read the previous year's glider threads please... all of the information is probably on there too.

Well, not necessarily. Wood is usually the main part of gliders, to prevent stall from lighter gliders made out of foam or paper or similar materials. Foam could be used to increase the surface area of the wing or something similar, but unless you have a good way to counteract this, I would not suggest building with a relatively large amount of foam.

Foam obviously has its pros and cons but you don't need it to do well in glider.

I would mostly use balsa wood and maybe a bit of foam to increase surface area

An all foam glider would be a disaster.

builderguy135 wrote:

isotelus wrote:

builderguy135 wrote:Design and quality of the plane matters soooo much more than the material you use. Also, read the previous year's glider threads please... all of the information is probably on there too.

Well, not necessarily. Wood is usually the main part of gliders, to prevent stall from lighter gliders made out of foam or paper or similar materials. Foam could be used to increase the surface area of the wing or something similar, but unless you have a good way to counteract this, I would not suggest building with a relatively large amount of foam.

Foam obviously has its pros and cons but you don't need it to do well in glider.

Yeah, of course. This goes for pretty much any non-wood material- does anyone on here know of a successful glider that was primarily non-wood? I would be interested to know how that would work.

isotelus wrote:

builderguy135 wrote:

isotelus wrote: Well, not necessarily. Wood is usually the main part of gliders, to prevent stall from lighter gliders made out of foam or paper or similar materials. Foam could be used to increase the surface area of the wing or something similar, but unless you have a good way to counteract this, I would not suggest building with a relatively large amount of foam.

Foam obviously has its pros and cons but you don't need it to do well in glider.

Yeah, of course. This goes for pretty much any non-wood material- does anyone on here know of a successful glider that was primarily non-wood? I would be interested to know how that would work.

I made a modified Protege design for Rustin and it worked quite well. I broke it a few days before so I used a simpler wood glider tho :\

Can you use cardboard? Would it fall under "paper"?

Yes we have the same question. Is cardboard allowed since it is technically paper?
I submitted a question on the official website, but I don't think they'll answer it, since it's about materials.