I need help with simple but nice trophy/award idea for hang gliding competition

[Rich Harman]

My experience with trophies/awards is nearly non existent. I have been asked again to create awards for our annual hang gliding competition, it's the longest running cross country competition in the world. Last year I engraved on beer mugs - and that was fine, turned out nice. This year I want to make something a little more formal but am at a loss for ideas. There is no money in this for me, although the meet director will probably insist on paying me something, he wouldn't take no for an answer last year.

We had a high school student draw up a nice logo for last years event and the design lent itself well to engraving. This year a different student made the drawing, which will be on a t-shirt, but it is not engraving friendly.

I've got lots of 1/8 and 1/4 clear acrylic, some black 1/4, and some nice 1/8" alder. I also have a bender. I'm looking for something that is simple, elegant, maybe multi layered, and somehow conveys the idea of free flight - in an abstract way since the awards will go to both hang glider pilots and paraglider pilots. It can be free standing or hung on a wall. Time is short, I hope to be able to make these without having to wait for an order to come in - and the budget is pretty much non-exixstant.

Here is a gallery of photos I took of the competition last year.

[Bert Kemp]

How bout a simple swept wing out of acrylic on standing base.

My experience with trophies/awards is nearly non existent. I have been asked again to create awards for our annual hang gliding competition, it's the longest running cross country competition in the world. Last year I engraved on beer mugs - and that was fine, turned out nice. This year I want to make something a little more formal but am at a loss for ideas. There is no money in this for me, although the meet director will probably insist on paying me something, he wouldn't take no for an answer last year.

We had a high school student draw up a nice logo for last years event and the design lent itself well to engraving. This year a different student made the drawing, which will be on a t-shirt, but it is not engraving friendly.

I've got lots of 1/8 and 1/4 clear acrylic, some black 1/4, and some nice 1/8" alder. I also have a bender. I'm looking for something that is simple, elegant, maybe multi layered, and somehow conveys the idea of free flight - in an abstract way since the awards will go to both hang glider pilots and paraglider pilots. It can be free standing or hung on a wall. Time is short, I hope to be able to make these without having to wait for an order to come in - and the budget is pretty much non-exixstant.

Here is a gallery of photos I took of the competition last year.

[Mike Null]

How about a mobile mounted on an acrylic base.

[Kev Williams]

You say you have lots of plex--

Years ago when I just started laser engraving, I did some researching how laser engravers work online, and I came across some websites that had several test and practice jobs done in Corel. One of them that I really liked was some basic clipart of snowy mountains and some text, etched into plex. The nifty part was it was done on several layers (forget how many, think it was 5) of plex to be stacked behind each other. The text was on the front layer, then the mountain and snow images were separated from each other, with the closest-to-farthest from your point of view engraved from front to back respectively- when done you just stood up each section behind each other, and the assembled result was really cool, very 3D looking. I just stood the pieces together on the desk. Something similar in 3 layers would work just as well I'd think, and it would be pretty simple to saw a kerf or 3 into a wood or plex base to stand the pieces up in. The pieces could get progressively larger from front to back too, for some asthetic variance...

[Rich Harman]

Swept wing is good, especially if multi layered. Not sure about a mobile, I do have a bunch of SS welding rod, it would be good to see an example. I'll need to make about a dozen so it can't get too complicated.

[Roy Sanders]

So if you took these two from your gallery and layered them against one of land or sky scape does that fit what your thinking?

hang.glider.jpgtwo.paragliders.jpg

tracing around the gliders and arranging them in the layers to create that 3D look?

'don't know what I'm talkin about Roy'