Here's a small water rocket glider that I put together. The rocket motor is a one liter soda water bottle filled half full with water and pumped up to 100 psi with a bicycle pump. There's lots of information on making water rockets and launchers on the web. My launcher was originally made for garden variety rockets but it works fine for the RC rocket plane as well.
The main wing and nose fuselage are carved from from 1 inch thick pink foam from Home Depot. The hollow parts of the fuselage that hold the bottle are made from flat 1/4 inch thick blue (fan-fold) insulation foam. To roll the flat foam I used a hair dryer to heat the foam and curved it around a cardboard mailing tube. The fins are 1/4 blue foam, stiffened with some 1.7 mil laminating film. I glued it all together with polyurethane Gorilla Glue. The bottle just slides into the back of the fuselage.
Basic specs:
Length: 20 inches
Wingspan: 21 inches
Weight: 6.9 ounces
Servos: 2 Towerpro 9 gram servos
Battery: 4 cell NiMh 1/3 AAA
I did some hand glide tests to make sure it the CG was OK and that it would fly, set the elevons to a neutral position, pumped it up and let it go.
It actually works. The video was made on an 80 psi charge. Later flights were made with 100 psi that went a bit higher. We estimated the max height was 150 - 200 feet.
The main wing and nose fuselage are carved from from 1 inch thick pink foam from Home Depot. The hollow parts of the fuselage that hold the bottle are made from flat 1/4 inch thick blue (fan-fold) insulation foam. To roll the flat foam I used a hair dryer to heat the foam and curved it around a cardboard mailing tube. The fins are 1/4 blue foam, stiffened with some 1.7 mil laminating film. I glued it all together with polyurethane Gorilla Glue. The bottle just slides into the back of the fuselage.
Basic specs:
Length: 20 inches
Wingspan: 21 inches
Weight: 6.9 ounces
Servos: 2 Towerpro 9 gram servos
Battery: 4 cell NiMh 1/3 AAA
I did some hand glide tests to make sure it the CG was OK and that it would fly, set the elevons to a neutral position, pumped it up and let it go.
It actually works. The video was made on an 80 psi charge. Later flights were made with 100 psi that went a bit higher. We estimated the max height was 150 - 200 feet.