| Question | Where to find the answer |
| Which airplane is right for my class? | Which model should I build? |
| How do I find help getting started? | Contact your local indoor model airplane club and ask for assistance and a demonstration. Usually they'd love to help! To contact club members in your area, see the list of indoor clubs worldwide |
| Where can I buy the materials? | See http://www.ultranet.com/~davison/material.htm because this has a complete list of kits, plans, wood, glue, covering materials and tools. |
| Are books available? | There's a great book on indoor building and flying which is available from IMS. The book contains 160 pages of plans, building techniques, and other useful information for both the rank beginner and the expert. It was written by Lew Gitlow. Daniel Briehl highly recommends it. It even contains information on making one's own microfilm solution. Other books are available too, see: http://www.ultranet.com/~davison/material.htm#Books |
| What experiments can we perform? | Build a wind tunnel: See Scientific American, November 1997 in the Amateur Scientist page 74. There's an excellent diagram and instructions on how to build a wind tunnel from a cardboard box. With it, students can perform a variety of aerodynamic experiments. Simple airfoil experiments can be performed with just a wing and a hair dryer. Experiment to compare flat wing to cambered wing: http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/FFMYHOBBY/science.html |
| Are there teachers who are willing to share their work? | Tim Lavender went to the Indoor Nationals
at Johnson City in May, '98, and one of his students,
Michele Boyd, won first place in Coconut Open, both in
scale and mass launch. His kids took 1st,  2nd and 3rd in open Coconut. Since they
sponsored Junior trophies his kids took 21 trophies home.
15 kids went to the nationals from there. He still has 18
kids building up a storm, mostly indoor scale, and at all
levels. "They go through a lot of sticks, and are
having more fun than is allowed!" One of his kids
just finished the club's first rubber powered helicopter
with tail rotor, and it flies! For more information,
contact Tim Lavender who is willing to help anyone who
needs it at: sarah.m.lavender@Vanderbilt.Edu
Randy Alaga at: alaga@scruznet.com is in Santa Cruz, CA and currently begining a series of lessons on flight. He has already started by folding some basic paper airplane designs. Can you offer any suggestions for steps he might take to get his students to some of the more advanced models? He is very interested in indoor free flight design, construction, competition. Daniel C Briehl is in the middle of a class building penny planes with eight high school age students. Three of the students are now finished with their models. The students are also doing experiments in aeronautical principals. They have done a field trip to the Icing Research Tunnel here at NASA. Of the eight students, four are ready to fly and two boys actually flew. Their best times were 2:57 and 3:00. Not bad for the first night! Ask him about his progress by contacting Daniel.C.Briehl@lerc.nasa.gov of the NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio 44135, Mail Stop 77/10, Telephone: 216-433-6108 |
| How can I help the kids with building and trimming? | Here is a wide variety of online Building Tips for different airplane models. |
| How do I run a simple contest? | The easiest competition is simply based
on flight duration. Stop watches are used to
record the time in flight. Start timing when the
student releases the aircraft. Stop timing when the
the aircraft touches the floor, walls, etc. Take
the total of the best three out of five flights. Some duration contests add static judging. Points are added if you build realistic scale models and build them well. Want to run a contest for kids? Dick Baxter of Laguna Niguel, California said that he's had "good luck running mass launch contests for middle school kids in classes up to 40 kids. It works if you have gym or flying area big enough for all to launch at once. Judging is easy. The last one down wins! Sometimes we get ties but not often. This avoids any strain on judges. Kids are happier too." Tom Sanders of Midwest Products writes "In addition to mass launch, having an "Atlantic Crossing" before the mass launch is always exciting. Name the opposite ends of the gym "Roosevelt Field" and "LeBouget." The closest to landing in France wins! It teaches how to moderate power and trim. Kids get the gist if the first flight is launched with low power and to the right. The torque effect will normally force it left. It also teaches kids to be mindful of which way the model flies, left or right. Then trim to fly in a complete orbit for "high time aloft" with the "mass laiunch" event at the end. |
