Make Your Own Free Flight Glider

These little babies can fly!

We’ve had a blast with these in the back yard. We’ve given them away to neighbor kids who love them. We’re even working on a big batch for all the kids at church. Check out the video on the Video page.

We’ve found the flight characteristics to be well suited for everyone. A slight toss gives a nice glide. A hard-as-you-can-throw toss sends it who knows where. Even the hold point can make a big difference: Hold it toward the front for level flight. Hold it toward the rear to send it to a skyward stall. Dad likes to throw it side arm and watch it make a horseshoe flight around the yard.

Some times it’ll float and float. Other times it’ll go up into a stall and lawn dart into the ground. Some times, when it stalls, it’ll flip over and fly inverted right back to you.

They’re also very tough. We’ve wacked them into the garage and into the side of the house. Over and over again we’ve smacked them onto the pavement and they keep holding up. Once in a while a craft stick will come unglued. What they absolutely cannot handle is being stepped on. This has happened a lot due to our two year old. When they do finally give up we just go make another.

How this came about..

My 5 year old is getting into airplanes since dad is into them. One day he brought me a tiny foam glider. It was about 2 inches long. I think he must have got it as a prize in Children’s Church. As he showed it to me so proudly I started thinking about the Fan Fold Foam (FFF) in the garage and how I had already made a very large free flight glider for my daughter.

Well, we took the little 2” glider apart. It was three pieces, a wing, a fuse and a nose tip for balance. I placed the wing and fuse on the scanner and brought them into an image editor. We printed it out as large as would fit on the page and then started to work.

To make our first glider we did the following:

Printed out the scanned image

Cut out around the outside of the fuse and wing

Taped it to the FFF with a couple pieces off cellophane tape.

Used a hobby knife to cut out the two pieces

Used a hobby knife to cut out the slot down the middle of the fuse

After cutting out the pieces we put them together and gave them a toss. I knew what to expect, but didn’t tell the kids as we were having one of those home school dad experiences. The plane, being WAY too light in the nose proceeded to flutter to the ground. Of course I could just tell the kids what was wrong, but why not have them think a little? My 8 yr old son came up with the solution. We need to put some weight on the nose.

So we experimented with different weights until we came up with the perfect match. Here’s what we did:

Broke two craft sticks in half

Used hot glue to hold the two halves on just above and below the wing.

The round tips were toward the front for safety

The edge of the round tips were just a smidge behind the leading edge of the wing nose

So, now YOU know how to do it..

Here’s what you’ll need:

FFF – This is Fan Fold Foam. We used the blue stuff from Lowe’s made by Georgia Pacific – ¼”

Craft Sticks – Bought in bulk from Wal-Mart. Two per plane.

Hobby knife – we happened to use #11 blades. These MUST be sharp.

Glue gun

Print Out of THIS JPG File. It’s actually a scan of a template we made so we can crank them out faster.

NOTE: You’ll NOT want to resize it. Use MS Paint and print at 100% size. This comes out to the exact size of the original. It may print on multiple pages as mine does for some reason, but you can just tape the pieces together. To download, opposite click on the link and choose Save Target As... It’s not too pretty, but it’ll do the job.

You can probably tell that the cost is minimal except you can’t just buy one or two sheets of FFF. They come in bundles. You may consider Sturdy Board from Wal-Mart. It’s more expensive, but you don’t have to buy a bunch.

Have Fun! Don’t forget to visit Answers In Genesis!

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