With the Thermal Racer – TR035 rc sailplane I wanted to power it with something with enough kick, but keep weight and cost down.

Also I wanted something different, like the Yanks do with their mussle cars – you know, they get a big block engine pre assembled and simply plonk it in

So first thing is to cut out a monster hole in the nose and an area for my battery casing.

I mounted the outrunner (I use outrunners as they stay much cooler as the whole thing spins) to a rubber/foam case which is then slotted into the area I cut out. The area for this case/battery bit is a little smaller for a very tight fit. This means beleive it or not I don’t have to glue anything

The whole rig – even with a four cell battery can sustain vertical flight without moving. The reason for this is give – something has to give when you land hard, and I used to break shafts, mounts and even damage my lipos. So I came up with this – the lipo is in a protective bed, even with a hard hit on the nose it does not damage anything. It acts like a bumper of a car.

The actual spinner is made up of several different components as I could not find a folding prop with a large spinner. For some reason even the big sailplanes have small spinners

I wanted a smooth scale look – not a pimple on the end of a nose sort of look.

I used a DuBro spinner and cut out parts for the folding prop, used shafts from another, blades from another and modified another central piece.

That has got me in trouble many times as my designs don’t always fly!

Anyway after a bit of research I really wanted this Slope Soarer to work out mint, not only look like those big dynamic carbon ones, but be easy to fly, light, strong and have power. Too many times we climbed the Mount here to find out it was not the best flying for the standard EPP foamie.

Power also means we can sail round the park, field, down the street or if we have a window of opportunity – at a decent slope….

Speaking of which, here is a picture of a nice slope we tested the Ridgehogs Sailplane…

I think I work backwards, being a graphic/product designer I like whatever I am making look good first – even though beauty is in the eye of the beholder

That has got me in trouble many times as my designs don’t always fly

Anyway after a bit of research I really wanted this Slope Soarer to work out mint, not only look like those big dynamic carbon ones, but be easy to fly, light, strong and have power. Too many times we climbed the Mount here to find out it was not the best flying for the standard EPP foamie.

Power also means we can sail round the park, field, down the street or if we have a window of opportunity – at a decent slope….

Speaking of which, here is a picture of a nice slope we tested the Ridgehogs Sailplane…

Firstly, what is Ridgehogs? The models them selves range from Ridge Racer, TR035 (Thermal Racer) and The XUAV STRIKER which is a jet. I will do all three builds for you and share some of my secrets (Mind you, I think I have learnt everything I know from everyone elses posts here).

Which one to start off with is the question, so why not two as I am building two at a time at the mo. I will start off with the TR035 which is in effect a style of slope soaring sailplane, and the Ridge Racer which is also built for the slope soaring class, this was designed by mixing a P51 Mustang and a PC9 together.

So here are the designs of the TR035, with such a big, thin wing I wanted the colours to be different on the underneath, plus I experimented with different combinations and will try them on the slope. I will try on the coast, inland on sunny and cloudy days as from a distance the combination of colours on different days can really effect the visual side of things (orientation).

The exact positioning and to find the CG for the TR035 will be a bit trial and error as I will mount things a little different as you will see.