BZA A freshly built glider has nothing on it. Everything below goes on and comes off through the attachment panel, exactly the way a car wheel does — which also means every one of them can be found, swapped, broken and stolen.
| Slot group | Slots | Takes | Needed to fly? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wheels | 4 | Any civilian car wheel | Yes — all four |
| Engine | 1 | Power Generator (with a spark plug in it) | No — but without it you need a hill or a car |
| Luggage | 2 | Any backpack, and it may be full | No |
Four wheels
Take a wheel in your hands, look at the hub, and attach it — the same action, the same prompt and the same drag-into-the-slot as any car in the game. Any civilian car wheel fits, not just one make, so whatever you pulled off whatever wreck will go on.
- All four, or it does not roll. The suspension is built in pairs; three wheels is not a lighter machine, it is a machine on its belly. You can still sit in it and read the instruments.
- A punctured wheel sags and a ruined one has twenty times the rolling resistance of a good one — which quietly kills the take-off run long before it looks broken.
- Anyone can take them off. That cuts both ways: it is how a parked glider gets immobilised without anybody having to destroy it, and it is how you immobilise somebody else's.
The engine is a power generator
There is no aircraft engine in DayZ, so the machine uses the loudest thing that exists: a Power Generator, bolted to the frame behind the seats and belted to the rear wheels. With it the glider launches itself off flat ground. Without it, it is still a glider — it just needs a slope or a car.
What you need
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A Power Generator
Industrial loot, and heavy. One found in the world usually arrives with some petrol still in it, so the first launch is often possible without a canister at all.
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A spark plug, in the generator
The generator has its own spark-plug slot. Fill it before you fit the motor. No plug, no start — and the machine tells you the same way a car does: it clicks and does nothing.
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Fit it into the Engine slot
Generator in your hands, drop it into the Engine square in the glider's panel. It comes off the same way. Its fuel comes with it, both directions.
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Petrol
Fuel it exactly like a car: a jerrycan of petrol, aimed at the filler at the back of the cart. The tank is 7 litres, and at 2.2 l/100 km that is not a limit you will hit — the motor's job is a few hundred metres of run-up, not travel. The cost is finding the canister, not the take-off.
What the motor gives, and what it costs
| What | The number, or the honest answer |
|---|---|
| Acceleration | About 1.4 m/s² — roughly 100 m of run-up to flying speed on the flat. |
| Top speed on the wheels | 65 km/h. It leaves the ground at 60, so the margin is exactly enough and no more. |
| Steering | Deliberately weak, and weaker the faster you go. A nosewheel dragged by a belt drive is not a steering rack. |
| Brake | SPACE. Firmer than the engine pushes; much gentler with the motor off, and it builds while you hold it. |
| In the air | Nothing at all. There is no propeller — the motor turns wheels, and in flight the wheels touch nothing. This is a glider with its own launch, not an aeroplane. |
| Weight | 45 kg on a 62 kg airframe, so a glider with the motor sinks noticeably faster than one without. It cannot come off in the air — that choice is made on the ground, and a machine without it needs a slope or a car to get up at all. |
| Noise | A running motor is the loudest thing you own out here. |
| Theft | It comes off like a wheel — but not while it is running. |
While it is bolted on, it stops being a generator. You cannot switch it on to power anything: it is an engine now, with the machine's ignition and the machine's tank. Take it off and it is a generator again, with whatever petrol is left still in it.
Two backpack racks
One rack each side of the frame. Each takes any backpack in the game, and it may already be full — which is not how DayZ normally treats a loaded pack near a vehicle, and is the whole reason these are racks rather than a boot.
- You can load them in place — no taking the pack off the rack, filling it and hanging it back.
- What is in them survives a restart.
- They show on the machine. A canvas bag appears on the side of the frame the moment a pack goes in, so a loaded glider looks loaded.
The second seat
A passenger rides back to back with the pilot, facing the tail. Get in from the right; the pilot gets in from the left, because the wing's leading edge is in the way on the other side.
Two crew and two full packs is the most this machine can carry, and it is a lot: it is a walk-out that does not have to touch a road.
A body stays in the seat. Anyone who dies aboard is left sitting there by the game itself, and on a two-seat aircraft that is the whole machine out of use. Point at it with empty hands and hold the interact key to pull the body out; it ends up on the ground where you are standing.
Keeping it alive
Weld the frame, tape the wing
Damage lands on the part that took it. A Blowtorch with gas mends the frame; the wing is a tarp, so it takes duct tape — about a tenth of a roll a patch. One health level per pass either way, and a car repair kit does nothing here.
Stand the glider upright
Flipped it? Point at it with empty hands and stand it back on its wheels. Nobody may be sitting in it.
Folding it into a bag
A machine that only exists as ten metres of aircraft is a machine you can never move away from the field you built it in. So it folds.
| Step | How | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Fold glider | Pipe Wrench in hands, look at the machine. | 20 s |
| Carry it | 90 kg, both hands, and it goes in no container in the game — not a backpack, not a car boot, not a tent. You are not running anywhere with it. | — |
| Unfold it | Put it down like any deployable: raise the ghost, aim, hold. It needs about 10 × 3.5 m of clear ground and it will refuse indoors. | 20 s |
- It will not fold while anybody is sitting in it, while it is moving, or while it is riding on a car roof.
- The wheels do not go into the bag. They drop on the ground where they were — pick them up, they are yours. Nothing else survives the fold: damage does not carry over either.
- There is no way to un-build it back into materials. The bag is how you change your mind about where a glider lives.
Putting it on a car
This is the third way into the air, and the only one that needs neither an engine nor a hill. The whole machine goes on the roof of any car in the game, in one piece, and rides there while somebody drives.
Loading it
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Park, and put the glider within 5 metres
The car has to be stopped — not just switched off, actually stopped — and nobody may be sitting in the glider.
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Pipe Wrench in hands, look at either one
Aim at the car or at the glider, whichever you are standing next to: Mount glider on roof, 20 seconds. Straps appear and the machine settles onto the roof.
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Drive
The car handles normally. The glider is along for the ride, not part of the physics.
Taking off from the car
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The pilot climbs into the glider on the roof
Get in the way you get into anything — the machine is up there, seat and all. If there are two of you, one drives and one sits in the wing.
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Get the car to flying speed
60 km/h is the number, and on a road that is nothing. Any straight stretch will do; you do not need a runway and you do not need 1 km.
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Press SPACE
The pilot lets go from the seat. The glider keeps the car's speed at the instant it releases — letting go is the launch — and from there it is an ordinary flight: pull back and climb.
Why this is the cheapest launch in the mod. No generator to find, no spark plug, no petrol, no hill and no long field. If you have a car and a friend, you have an air force. It is also the quietest: a driving car sounds like a driving car.
Taking it back off
Stop the car, wrench in hands, Take glider off roof, 20 seconds. It is set down on the ground beside the car, upright and ready. The action is offered only on a stopped car — letting go at speed is not unloading, it is flying, and the pilot does that from the seat.