Foam plate pilots

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
• Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Planning and setting up this activity

• If you're doing this activity for the Air Activities Stage 3, make sure to do the Trimming. If you’re doing this for Stag 5, add the flaps, slot and slats. 
• The glider is called an FPG-9, which stands for Foam Plate Glider. It's made from a nine-inch paper plate - that’s where the ‘9; comes from! 
• When setting up your runway or throwing area, use a tape measure to place cones or markers every metre from the starting line. This helps keep measurements fair and makes it easier to see how changes to the control surfaces affect how far things fly. 

Running this activity

1. Cut along the solid lines on the ‘FPG-9 template’ sheet. Avoid cutting along the dotted lines. 
2. Place the template in the centre of the foam plate. You may wish to use tape or sticky tack to hold it in place. 
3. Make sure that the tail is on the plate and isn't on or against the edges of the plate. The tab on the front of the plane can be the curved part of the plate. The ends of the wings should go onto the curved edge too.  
4. Draw around the template and mark on any solid lines. 
5. Mark on solid lines for the elevons and rudders (the control surfaces), and the slots. These are the purple lines on the template. 
6. Next, draw on any of the dotted lines. 
7. Now, carefully cut out the glider, cutting along the edge. 
8. Cut along the dotted line to separate the tail from the wing. 
9. When you cut the slots for the tail and wing, make sure they’re only as wide as the foam plate is thick. If the slots are too big, the pieces might be loose and won’t stay in place properly.
10. Cut along the solid lines to make the elevens and the rudder. Label them with the marker pen.
11. Attach the tail to the wing by slotting them together. Use two small pieces of tape to secure the bottom of the tail to the wing.
12. Fold the tab at the front of the glider over a 1p coin, then tape them together
13. Everyone should check that their rudder, left elevon and right elevon are all flat. They should be lined up with the tail and wing). This helps it fly straight. This is what they all do: 
    • Rudder: helps the glider turn left or right (yaw).
    • Elevons: help the glider go up and down (pitch) or tilt side to side (roll).
    • Penny: represents weight. Moving it changes the glider’s balance, just like shifting fuel or cargo in a real plane. 
14. Now, once they’ve made their glider, everyone should head to runway/throwing area and test their glider by throwing it gently.
15. Make sure all young people are standing at one end of the hall, with a clear space ahead for gliders to fly and land safely. No one should stand in the landing zone. 
16. See how it flies – does it turn, dive, or climb?
17. You could make some adjustments and see if you can get it to fly straighter or further. 

Once you've completed all the tasks, get everyone into groups and ask them to think about what they have observed.

• • What happened when they changed the rudder, elevons, or penny? 
  • Could they control the glider’s flight path? 
  • What did adding flaps or slats make them think about how real planes work? 

Remind everyone that when air flows over the control surfaces, it changes how the glider moves. By changing those surfaces, it can control what the aircraft does.