AMA Glider

History Behind Slobodan Midich's Up
An AMA Glider Original Article

I wanted to share with you some history about this Standard Catapult Design, The “Up” and Slobodan Midich. I never met Slobodan face to face, but I hope some day our paths will cross. We became “internet friends” in early 2005. During the winter months of 2005, I started trying to understand how to make indoor model gliders turn better times. I thought I might be able to make some progress if I better understood airfoils and aerodynamics. My web searching led me to a program called xfoil developed by Mark Drela, a professor at MIT. Xfoil is a free software package that can be downloaded from the MIT website (http://raphael.mit.edu/xfoil/). There is also in Yahoo groups; xfoil-Forum for exchange of ideas about xfoil (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xfoil/) and

Indoor- Discussion of Indoor Models (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indoor/).

Both of these groups have very interesting discussions about the subject of aerodynamics, models, airplanes, and indoor models. I joined both groups, and I was reading many of the messages sent out by members of these groups. I noticed Slobodan Midich was also a member of both groups and was very knowledgeable about Indoor models, airfoils and how to run xfoil. Since I was just learning about xfoil and had some questions, I sent Slobodan an e-mail message, and from that our friendship developed. Slobodan has taught me a lot about aerodynamics and understanding how to use and apply the information from xfoil. In this process he designed a Standard Catapult Glider, he refers to as the Up. I find this design very interesting and asked his permission to put this design on this website, with all of his work. Below are the following links to Slobodan’s work which I encourage you to read. I find this very interesting reading and hope you enjoy it as much as I have.