my Lidl VXL Glider conversion

Acheronus

New member
Now, we in Europe have a lovely little supermarket called Lidl, and once a year, they sell the holy grail...a decent sized foam glider that can be converted to RC.

There are quite a few videos on YouTube of conversions, ranging from mild to wild. Well, here's mine.


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Start with this lovely glider, take 2 coffee's and a shot of bravado.

First, remove the canopy. It's hot glued on, so needs cutting or a fair bit of leverage.

Next, remove the giant bolt from inside, and then hollow that sucker out!

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Now, this is where the bravado kicks in..because it was at this point I cut the top off...and the tail!!

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Once this major surgery was completed, on with the next major change...a V-Tail.

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I cut the HStab in line with the large notch to make 2 separate tails, these would make the V-Tail.

I then hollowed out the fuselage area and some of the 'Spine' to make some room for the electronics. I also cut reliefs for the servos and wires, and holes for the antennas to go through.

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I had decided to future proof the design, so had left room for a 3s1100mah Lipo, FS-IA6 Rx and 30a ESC in the nose. At some point I will pod it, for both a standard prop in tractor and pusher configuration, and even an EDF (now where is that 64mm...)

I trimmed down the tail area from its square lug (that mates with the notch in the standard tail) to a 90 degree angle, to accept the new tail feathers.
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For the ruddervators, I just measured 2.2cm from the trailing edge, and cut straight along. These were then bevelled, and attached with the supplied stickers to act as hinges! They were then reinforced with hot glue, as failure would be a bad thing!

For control horns, I just cut down a lolly (popsicle) stick and drilled holes for the quick links. I decided to put them this way round as the servo arms are quite thin.

Nice n cheap 5g servos control things, and these are set in line with the trailing edge of the wing, using flower wire pushrods.

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I also decided that I wanted winglets, so had to either fix the wing in place, or come up with a clever solution.

My clever solution was to fix the wing to the Spine, glued and screwed, and glue a nice big dowel in place. That took care of the rear...

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For the front, I went full-on FTand decided to use a cable tie, a lolly stick and a wood screw!!

I made a channel in the wing and glued in a cut piece of lolly stick. In front and behind this I made a small hole for the cable tie. I also cut a hole in the lower fuselage, and put a nice big wood screw from one side to the other, to catch the loop of the cable tie.

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I have noticed that since removing the Spine, there is a gap at the front. So, foam board to the rescue to fill that gap. It's not structural, so no harm done!

With all the electronics installed, the CG seems bang on the factory measurement!

Hopefully the weather will be a little kinder this weekend, so glide tests can commence, and then I can get around to building the removable power pods and testing it as a powered plane.


Hope this little article helps, and inspires someone to hack the heck out of a Lidl Plane!!
 

Acheronus

New member
Update: following a Lidl glide test, realise that I needed a carbon reinforcement to the rear fuse,. From just in front of the servos, to almost the end of the tail.

Also had to put more throw on the ruddervators, just moved the linkage stoppers in about 1/8"

Power pod construction should start today for my iddy bitty 1806, just to stooge it around. And the the EDF pod.
 

33joe

New member
I have the same glider and here is my conversion to full 4ch electric with FPV

 
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33joe

New member
I decided to extend for two resons - CG and I can converit it back even to be chuck glider again
 

Acheronus

New member
I managed to get the cg pretty much stock with the 3s 1100mah, plus the loss of the VStab took some weight out of the tail.
 

Bavarian_RC

Elite member
I just stepped across this thread and thought it could be a good idea to share with you my previous Lidl chuck glider RC conversions. Let’s start with my latest one, which was definitely the most challenging one so far. It was the conversion into an A-10 Warthog.

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In order to keep things simple, I decided to build only dummy engine nacelles in the back and power it with two motors and propellers in front of the wing. A wise decision, as the conversion finally turned out to be much more effort than initially thought... as usual!

Some impressions of the build process:

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During this build, I really enjoyed using and mixing the different skills I gathered on all my previous builds like the basic techniques from FT foam board designs, Lidl conversions or more advanced techniques like fiber glass laminates. And of course I was able to make good use of my 3D printer. But all the 3D printed parts could have also been built with plywood or foam board.

If you’re interested in the complete build process, this is the link to the build video:

 

Bavarian_RC

Elite member
I forgot to add some words about flying the Lidl A-10. I was quite nervous before the first flight as I made some major modifications, like repositioning the wing on the fuselage (including change of angle of attack, which is always a bit too much on chuck gliders) and adding the dummy engine nacelles in the back. What would be the effect on the CG and the flight characteristics? Well, no other way to find out than to just turn on the engines and toss it into the air.

After some sketchy moments and corrections to the trimming my A-10 was behaving quite well. I just had to move the CG a little bit forward. The stability in the pitch axis was not overwhelmingly high. I knew this would happen, as I changed the geometry of the horizontal stabilizer to be more “A-10 like”. By doing so I reduced the size by approx. 10%. But all in all it was still within an acceptable range. Speed and agility were as expected and so the fun factor was quite high.

Here's the flight video:

 

Ramses

New member
.
Hi, nice topic!
I`m from the Netherlands and got myself a LiDL Glider too to convert into an rc plane.
Finished mine as a Slope Soarer, here some pictures:

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I`ve made a small buildthread in a Dutch forum:
https://www.modelbouwforum.nl/threads/lidl-glider-playtive-xl.277401/#post-4162668

Finished my LiDL Glider two days ago, so I haven`t flown her at a slope yet.
Made some test throws on flat ground in light wind though.
Here a video of the test throws:


I will post a video if I have flown my LiDL Glider at the slope

Cheers, Ramses
deLooff Aeroplanes
.
 
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cyclone3350

Master member
It amazes what one can do these chuck gliders. I have these 2 conversions. One is a Raptor glider to a 42" EF-1 power speedster and the other is a Fire Fox Twister to a 1s indoor thingy. I thought they were cool until I saw the A-10. The possibilities seem unlimited.
 

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