SLOPING OFF...
...the Newsletter of Christchurch and District Model Flying Club for...December 2025
PINT-SIZED POCKET ROCKET!
DREAM FLIGHT WEASEL EPO FOAM GLIDER, by David Bicker
At the end of one club meeting there were rather a lot of bits left over that weren’t wanted & nobody particularly wanted to have to take home again. Amongst them was a rather ancient, sad looking badly tape covered triangle of a foam wing. Nobody gave it a second glance – so I seem to remember that it ended up being given to me as I happened to be standing near it as everything was being packed away. It wasn’t a sight for sore eyes – it was just a sight!
Back home, I stripped off all of the faded yellowing fibreglass reinforced tape that was plastered all over it. The fibregalss strands came off in long stringy bits, leaving a mess of glue behind. I dug out the mini servos (one actually fell out without much help). I replaced them with MG90S, small metal geared servos – because I had a bag of 10 of them in stock from an internet bulk purchase a while back. I used a tiny Radiomaster R84, 4 channel RX and a slim 950mAh square Ni-MH battery pack, which was just narrow enough to fit in the tiny fuselage.
I re-covered it using sheets of sticky back vinyl that I had spare from my vinyl plotter cutter kit. The wings are designed to detach from the main body & the tail fin lifts off too. As it stood, the wings could rotate a bit around the wing spar tube, so I added small powerful magnets front & rear inside the wing joint & inside the tail fin joint. I taped all of the edges with 1” fibreglass tape to make the foam at the joints more resilient. The effect actually looks attractive too.
I researched the CoG online, but could only find one for the newer version, the Weasel Trek. I had to guess the amount of travel on the elevons.
After that I tried to get it to fly on 3 separate occasions, but giving up rather quickly because it was completely uncontrollable & would sat in the air a matter of seconds, making violent manoeuvres until it crashed.
Fast forward to18/04/2026. A perfect day at Win Green on my own all day bar constantly being buzzed by light aircraft, often flying low directly over the slope, Red Kites & Buzzards & a Kestrel.
Conditions felt about right – 8-12mph win, a little choppy, but with thermals coming through. First attempt at a launch & as usual, it made for the ground in seconds. Next attempt I got it airborne, but it was jinxing all over the place, with me desperately trying to work out what was going on. It clicked – wrong CoG. Hence such wild movements in the air. I added a 10g weight just behind the nose section & tried again. MUCH better! I got a flight out of it! So, I spent about 20 minutes trying different aileron & elevator travel percentages with it improving each flight. Next the elevator was trimmed to allow level hands-off flight – which worked!
I was now able to do big loops & ridiculously tight loops, buy a roll just wallowed out. So I dialled the aileron travel back up in stages until a tight roll could be achieved. There was one moment when I missed that I had switched the ailerons from + to – in the settings, resulting in the ailerons being reversed for one launch! That was quickly remedied.
With everything set up properly & the CoG correct the little wing came to life! Docile hands off if you want (until the wind catches it), or screaming around faster than my Zagi making abrupt sharp turns, flick rolls & loops. It’s huge fun now & no longer a stressful experience – which it was initially. I was that close to binning it, I was getting so fed up with it not behaving. So, it just goes to show that if you analyse what’s going wrong & make little changes, gradually ironing out the bugs, a “bad” model can become a “good” model.
As it’s so small, it may well replace my Zagi on some trips to give me more room in my car. I’d say it’s a perfect parcel shelf model. It’s small enough to find a home for it in my touring caravan, so it can go everywhere with me when on holiday (just have to remember the TX!).
