The Edmonds Deltie is one of the most popular boost gliders, and with good reason. The glider is well designed, and it has a nice style to it. It can be assembled and ready to fly in a very short period of time. Considering the fact that the glider only weighs around five grams, it is capable of staying in the air for a long time.

Construction

When you finish putting the glider together, I recommend using some very fine sandpaper in order to sand the balsa wood smooth and to round the edges of all parts. This will make it more aerodynamic. Again, remember that this is fragile balsa wood. Handle it carefully.

The glider is boosted into the air with a motor pod that is 13 mm in diameter. The parts for this pod are supplied in the kit. The only flaw of this kit was found here. There was no motor block for the pod. However, this problem is easily fixed since 13 mm motor blocks are available from Estes or Apogee Components.

The pod has a small streamer attached to a Kevlar® shock cord as its recovery system. When working with it, I recommend installing it and preparing it according to the instructions. Many people tend to add a longer shock cord or a longer streamer. If you do that, you may encounter a pod/separation failure in flight known as a "Red Baron." The glider gets tangled in the recovery device of the pod, and the two fall to the ground together. This may or may not damage the glider, but in competition, a Red Baron is an automatic flight disqualification (I speak from experience) whether it is damaged or not.

Flight

Before you launch your glider into the air, you will need to trim it. The instructions have you mark where the center of gravity should be located on the glider when it is completely built. Use the trimming clay supplied to add any mass at the front or the back of the glider in order to get the glider to balance at the mark that you made before you built the glider. Test fly it by throwing it with your hand several times until the glider flies straight. You will also want to add mass with the clay to one side of the glider so that it will turn in circles when glides down. Otherwise, the glider will fly straight from a high altitude and you will not get it back, no matter how far you go to chase it.

When you load the glider with the pod attached onto the pad, you will need to clip a cloths pin onto the launch rod so that the pod can rest on it. Then hook the glider onto it so that it fits loosely, but securely rests on the hook of the pod. Another cause of Red Barons is the glider hooking onto the pod too tightly, so check this before you go up.

The pod will take any 13 mm motor. However, I would not recommend using an Estes A10 or an Apogee B7. Those two motors have too much thrust, and would probably shred the glider. The Apogee A2 and B2 10.5 mm motors are great for this glider. They allow a long burn which provides lower amounts of thrust and a smooth boost to a higher altitude. Depending on how well you trimmed the glider, it should stay up for a long time. It's a good idea to have two people recover this thing, with one person watching the pod and the other watching the glider.

Grades

Design: A+
Construction: A+
Flight: A+

A fun to build and fly glider with perfect A+ ratings. Don't let this kit ever pass you by.

I am extremely impressed by this kit. Good materials and excellent laser-cut parts yield a fast-building sport model with very good competition potential.  The glider itself is made up of only eight pieces of 1/16" balsa - wings, elevon, fuselage, tip plates and nose reinforcements. The pieces are almost self-jigging and go together very quickly. Even a slow builder like me can put it together in an afternoon using yellow carpenter's glue - complete with fillets. ;-) Rob does NOT recommend airfoiling or rounding anything, so it's almost a 'shake the box' build-up (model railroading kit term <G>). I must admit that I'm planning to try *some* sanding on my next kit - just to see what effect (if any) it will have on the glide. The only shortcoming I see in this kit is failure to provide an engine hook. Per the instructions, motor retention is accomplished by taping the motor casing in place with masking tape. I prefer more positive location and retention, so I'm adding a motor hook (trimmed to avoid exhaust gas impinging on the retainer) and engine block to the pop-pod on mine. Outside of that one minor quibble, I find this to be an absolutely outstanding kit and a great introduction to boost gliders. Check the launch reports for results, but so far this looks like a real winner! 

Brief:
This is a very nice kit by Edmonds Aerospace. The pop pod comes back on a streamer, and the deltie glides back.

Construction:
The kit contains:

• 1 tube and a lot of little balsa parts, all very neatly laser-cut.

It was very easy to build, fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. Everything fits together nicely, and everything was laser-cut. You just have to have a little glue and an hour or so.

Finishing:
Rob Edmonds recommends you use markers, so I did. It looks very nice with orange, yellow and green highlighters. Do not use paint.

Construction Rating: 5 out of 5

Flight:
I flew it 4 times. Once it separated at apogee, but the ejection charge had not fired; so the pop pod tumbled about 100 feet, and then popped. I used half a square of wadding, but that is all you need. Once I forgot it entirely while half prepping the glider, half keeping those idiotic 5 year olds from stepping on my rockets. Those kids were crazy. Once I had to rip my modified Echostar out of the hands of one of those mental little kids; and there had to be 3 dozen of the little devils. The RSO and the RCO were yelling over the loud speakers "DO NOT TOUCH THE ROCKETS".

Then my modified Echostar flew, and that demented little kid tried to race me to get to my own rocket. I do not think I have ever run faster than when I was trying to rescue my rockets from these un-supervised morons. I do not know where their parents were. Once some kid grabbed some super-detailed scale model and started running with it. He almost tripped over the parachute, but luckily the unfortunate owner grabbed his model and took it off him. WHEW! Anyway, my deltie flew straight every time I launched it, and once it caught a thermal and flew all the way to the parking lot and hit a car!

It was packed there, it was Space Day 2003, and the rocket landed right in the middle of the cars. I would have wasted half the day looking for it, if some nice stranger had found it sitting next to his car!

Recovery:
Flew well every time. I always had my eye on the glider, so I had to search for my pop-pod after every flight. Every time, though, somebody found it next to their chair, or where they were looking for their rocket, or just sitting in the field waving its little streamer.

Flight Rating: 5 out of 5

Summary:
Great rocket. I cant wait until the 18MM version comes out.

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5

Brief:
This is a boost glider that literally takes minutes to build and isn't all that expensive.

Construction:
The kit comes with a body tube for the engine and pop pod recovery device (streamer), three main body pieces, balsa nose cone, and clay for weighting one fin down to enable it to circle around your launch site instead of taking off a couple miles down wind.

The directions were extremely easy to follow and the entire kit was insanely easy to put together. You almost didn't need the instructions. All of the balsa pieces are laser cut and look very sharp. It's just like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. All I used to put it together was CA glue and some markers to add some of my own flavor.

PROs are that all parts are well cut, easy instructions, and a very basic design so anyone of any ability could piece it together in no time. There aren't any CONs other than that it is pretty delicate. I wouldn't even recommend sanding the balsa at all.

Finishing:
NO PAINT! It adds way too much weight. This is just a little rocket!

Construction Rating: 4 out of 5

Flight:
Well, before you fly it you really don't know how much clay to use to prevent it from taking off down wind. My first flight I thought was set up perfectly. I had it balanced just like the instructions said but it still flew at least 250 yards over a fence and into a baseball field nearby. And that was only on a 1/2A! I got it back and of course added more weight to the fin. The second flight proved to be still too light on the clay so I added more again. While testing it out by just throwing it gently to see how well it turns, it landed in the grass and snapped just behind the nose area which had to be glued back together. It flew again and was much better, however, it really didn't catch the wind very well. It actually fell into a flat spin for a good 4-5 seconds before it actually started flying. Almost like it was too light! I had really mixed feelings about this kit at this point. It got to be way more frustrating than I thought it would be.

Recovery:
The pop pod streamer was constantly tangling but the tube/nose cone was light enough to safely tumble by itself if it had to. And of course there was the whole glide recovery thing too. That's another job all together.

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
It was not too bad to this point, but that's about as good as it is going to get. The customer service part was absolutely downright terrible--and I don't mean from the hobby shop I bought it from--I mean Edmonds, the manufacturer! I ordered two of these kits 2 weeks before Christmas in hopes of giving one each to my daughter and father so they could build and fly them together while we were home on vacation. Well, both packages were missing the main body tube. How can you miss packing such a thing as the body tubes in both packages? To make a longer story shorter, I didn't get the replacement pieces until nearly March. That's right, March! The online hobby shop I ordered it from no longer carries Edmonds supplies either. I don't think I'd waste my time with Edmonds gliders anymore anyway. They might be easy and convenient to build, but they have absolutely zero durability. It broke twice in the same spot from just me tossing it to see if it glides.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5