What is the best design for a small scale glider?

I’m making a small glider out of wood and was wondering what would be a good design for the wings. I’m hoping to keep the wings under 2 feet. From what I’ve seen something long and narrow looks like the best bet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Gliders generally have long, thin wings. You can save a lot of weight by cutting only the upper and lower “curves” of the ribs, instead of making solid ribs. The advantage is that you save weight. The disadvantage is that it wouldn’t be as strong as a structure with solid ribs.

Guillow’s makes a rubber-powered model called the Arrow, which has very good flying qualities. It has a 28" wingspan with solid ribs, and uses the traditional tissue-and-balsa construction. The wings have double dihederal; that is, it consists of four panels with angles at the centre and half-way out on each side. That makes it very stable.

Thank you very much for the info. It should definitly help me with this project.

I used to have a model called the “Sniffer”. I think it might have been made by Midwest, but that’s a really wild guess. It was a free-flight airplane with a span of 36" and a Cox .020 PeeWee engine. It had the same type of wings as the “Arrow” (the outer panels also had dihederal), but they relatively wider (in chord) because it wasn’t a “glider”. The airfoil was semi undercambered. That is, it started out convex on the underside of the leading edge, and then went to concave. The wings and stabilizer were tissue-covered balsa frames, and the fuselage and vertical stab. were balsa. The empanage had a “dethermalizer”. This was a metal tube fixed to the rear end of the fuselage. The horizontal and vertical stabs pivoted as a unit at the leading edge and were pulled up by an elastic band. The trailing edge of the stab and the end of the fuselage had wire “hooks”, and the stab was held down by a tiny elastic band on the hooks. A length of fuse was put into the metal tube and through the rear elastic band. The fuse was lit before flight. After the engine ran out of fuel, the fuse would burn down to the elastic band and break it. This caused the airplane to stall so that it wouldn’t fly away. (I learned a hard lesson about that when I was younger and lost a Cox .049 powered “Super Sniffer” on its first flight because I was unclear on the concept.)

I’d like to build another one, but an infoseek and hotbot search a couple of years ago didn’t turn up any “Sniffer” or “Super Sniffer” kits or plans. I’m sure I could fake it though. All I need is the time and space!

Good luck with your project.