I have heard of building contests where each member playing brings a bottle of CA and kicker, and a radio system, and is handed a bag of parts. Everybody gets one hour to build, install, and test, then it's a fly-off for the best design. The bags all have the exact same components in them: some balsa, some tubing, string and wire for pushrods, maybe some foam, whatever. Pretty cheap stuff you can get from the LHS in bulk. You could give each guy a single sheet of Dow blueboard styrofoam, and he has to make the entire plane out of that and nothing else except the control bits and pieces, etc. Get a lot of imaginative designs out of that approach, and not a few laughs.
Variations might be giving each team one of those store-bought foam 1-meter gliders and let them mod it any way they want at home, then bring them in for a flyoff at the next meeting. Additional parts must be limited to some small percentage: only so much balsa, cardboard, plastic, etc. so that these are still really mostly the foamie you started with, only reengineered. Contest will be for duration, speed, agility (most loops times most rolls), and "coolness". Having a building bee is a popular winter activity: everybody gets together to cut wings and wood for a one-design, all of them to be flown in a contest that spring. Might extend the session to glassing wings and pulling molds, etc. so everybody gets some practice making advanced composite parts, but spreading the machinery costs and raw materials costs around to keep it affordable. One vacc system, one bow and PS, etc. 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
