This was mentioned in one of the hi-start threads, and I am waxing all nostalgic over it, I must have ordered three of them from Hobby Shack over the years, back when they cost about 25 bucks, near what the shipping alone might be today;-)... the first one was my first glider, and it quickly got heavier with epoxy and cloth repairs as I was self-teaching at the time... with the weight and drag, I got no thermalling practice, but a LOT of histart launching and plenty of landing practice;-) I also flew it a few times with a greasy little .049 power pod. That was a nightmare, it never sat quite the same, the trim was always different every flight, and it made everything dirty and sticky.
I folded the wing on one while launching into a strong wind and suddenly pulling a little too much back-stick. After that, I always buried a length of piano wire under the cheap wooden spar in the foam spar slot, and I could bend that wing into a Hobie hawk shape on launch, but never broke another one;-) I felt like the Spirit of 76 was the right plane for me to learn on; cheap, easy to fly, no bad habits, easy to trim with an all-moving H stab, indestructible yet easy to fix. It was like a runner training with ankle weights: when I moved to a Goldberg Electra, it seemed like it weighed nothing and I was blown away byt he improvement in performance.;-) Every once in a while, I feel like revisiting the Spirit, seeing what I could do with a little sanding and judicial use of reinforcement and micro radio gear... Any of you guys have some stories about this plane? RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
