It was the year 2030. The United States, in anticipation of world war three, had decided to create a new method of spying on other countrys. This was the result. The I1 Albatross. A beautifully crafted glider.

Designed to fly twice as high (at least) as most modern day passenger planes, it was built to fly at night, and as such, was designed in a way that made it almost invisible to everything. If it ever needed to fly lower, it had lights, which it would activate. Now I hear you asking, “how would lights make it more invisible? They iluminate it even more!” However, you are thinking in the wrong direction entirely. This is because as many as 40 percent of people beleive that alians exist. The lights resemble lights seen on several supposed ufo sightings. These lights make it even less probible that somone will report them to the govornment, for fear of being accused of being insane. It was designed so that it creates a huge amount of lift from every single surface of the plane. This means that it can take off going about 30 mph! (Yes, I said take off, scroll down lower to see more on that.) because It can fly at incredibly low speeds, it can stay up for hours and hours on end, and take tons of pictures of enemy citys, and armys, wthout coming down. It also is practicly silent, because it has no form of propulsion at all. (Once it is at altitude.)
These are some of the many reasons why gliders were chosen as being used for spying, instead of larger faster planes. (Some other ones are because they cost way less fuel wise, and also are slower, so the quality of the picture is better)

Now, about the spying. This plane would be crewed by 2 people. 1 pilot, and one defence officer. The pilot would only fly the plane, and do nothing else. The defence officer would watch radar for trouble, and would also look through the spy camara to take pictures. How did they take pictures of the ground from 50 thousand feet in the air you may ask? Well, the answere is, you need a very expensive camara. This camara would be stowed, during flight, until right before “picture time”, so as to reduce drag.

To take off, the plane needs only to be going around 30 mph, which allowed it to take off from most helipads! (It would often be carried around on a very small carrier like the USS tiny, or a destroyer, and doing this would have to be able to take off in a very small space, and I have actually tested, it can take off of the destroyer, if done carefully and correctly.) It would then fly up to 50-60 thousand feet, and jettison its propeller, which would fall down into the ocean (most probably).

Now, about the long awaited propeller! Because most planes cannot fly up to as high as this glider needed to be, it was decided that it would have its own propulsion source, which would be jettisoned once up to height, to remove drag and weight. Therefore, a small prop engine, with 20 gallons of gas, was attached to the the back of the glider, to power it up to height.

The propulsion unit (as it was called) was a 1 time use device, and as such, many were made, because it needed a new one, every time it flew. (The parachute on it was only to stop people below from being killed by “presents from the sky”)

The gliders range was enormous, and even greater because of how high it started in the air. It could pass over entire countries, and then still have enough height and speed to glide back to the United States!

I built this for the glider challenge by @thegliderguy

The instructions are in game, have fun!