Guillow's Glider Event

This was an impromptu event that the local volunteers came up with years ago that turned out to be a real blast!  Lee Damnann had a great little glider assembled from a couple of the Guillow's hand out kits like this that he was catapulting up to the ceiling during the morning Saturday. 

Before long the rules were established:
1) You get to start with two of the stock Guillow's hand out kits
2) You can garbage pick from any can in the room for more pieces
3) The original EAA log must be visible on the wings

Brett, John, Rob Lee Damnann and I got busy working on our ideal designs between repair and modification requests from the kids.  Rob did a single polyhedral modification and in short order there were kids lined up several deep for the "mod shop".  Every competition glider design was based upon using both wings to double the span of the stock kit. 

Left to right: John Kagan, Brett Sanbron (with two attempts), Jim Buxton (kneeling) Lee Damnann, Rob Romash.

After some major effort and tweaking we were in the 20 second range with modified Guillow's gliders!  One of the great variables of the event is that we flew it concurrently with the rest of the kids in the hangar.  That meant getting a flight to the ground could be a real accomplishment at times, and instant glider destruction under foot was a known variable!

As the dust settled though it was Oshkosh local glider guru Lee Damnann taking top honors with a 25 second plus flight!  That is impressive!  Lee beat out two glider national record holders and an F1D world champ turned glider guru to win the event.  He made a comment about local rules and locals rule!  Well done Lee!  I would say we will get him next year, but we put all the effort we had into this year and it was still not enough.  We will try next year, but I am not overly confident in our success!

Lee and his great flying "Garbage Glider" winner:

Well done Lee!