My 4 year-old son got one of these from a friend... it does fly like
a rock. I didn't realize they were claiming it was supposed to be
aerodynamic, but it seems to be lacking the fundamentals of flight...

Dean

"Roger Long" om wrote in message ...
My son is getting an education about the real world. He got a small foam
glider for Christmas with a futuristic looking three piece foam wing.
According to the packaging, the toy company was set up to raise money for
development of this new aircraft design. Neat.

We looked it up at:

http://www.rexresearch.com/carrcoan/carrcoan.htm


The fellow behind it is flight instructor of 26 years experience and there
is a long involved explanation of how the wing works. The explanation didn
't make much sense to this author of some articles on lift

http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/Articles.htm

but, what the hell. Maybe it works but for reasons the designer doesn't
understand.

We took it out and tried it. As near as I can tell, it has about the same
aerodynamic characteristics as a diecast metal airplane model. I could
detect no sign of lift or aerodynamic effects at all. It follows a
trajectory for a short distance until drag overcomes inertia and then heads
straight down. We doubled up the rubber band sling for more speed. It went
twice a far but exhibiting about the same flight characteristics as a rock.

I looked up Robert Carr in the pilot data base. The only one in OK has only
a ground instructor's certificate. Could be he's someone else and the
Robert Carr behind the glider isn't in the database. I feel better though
not seeing any evidence that this fellow is teaching anyone to fly a real
plane.

I just wish I could figure out how they got the movies on the toy company
web site.

http://www.iwatoyco.com/

My 40 plus years of fiddling with model and real airplanes were not enough
to show me how to coax the slightest hint of aerodynamic response out of
this turkey.

The text of the full patent is included in the first site linked above. It'
s even more of a hoot than the glider. Just goes to show that you can
patent anything.

My son isn't learning anything about aerodynamics but he is learning about
hype.