KRONFELD ON GLIDING AND SOARING.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

GLIDING AND SOARING PLANES 273
This unbraced monoplane of the Hanover Flieger Gruppe,
which was evolved with the help of Professor Proll and the
Dipl. Ing. Madelung, was the first to demonstrate clearly,
the importance of aspect ratio. In this machine it was
i to io.8. The wing surface consisted of a twenty-feet-long
middle part which rested upon the fuselage and was attached
to it by two struts. The outer parts of the wing were ten
feet long and carried the ailerons. The wing had only one
spar, and torsion was taken by a plywood nose. The ribs
were built up as light girders. The fuselage had a square
cross-section and curved upwards behind, thus enabling
the pilot to drop the tail deeply when taking-off and landing.
Typical of this machine were three footballs hung upon
axles, which acted as excellent shock absorbers when
landing. There was no tailplane in front of the elevator.
The rudder and the fin were very large. The machine
weighed a hundred and fifty-four pounds without its pilot.
But although the " Vampyr " was an excellent machine,
it has been easily surpassed by the high efficiency machines
of to-day, all of which are built to a standard form. Those
which I am about to describe have been credited with the
greatest successes in recent competitions.
The " Westpreussen " was designed by the Dipl. Ing.
Hoffmann, of the Darmstadt School. Nearly all the sailplanes
of this type have a square middle section to which are
attached elliptical outer planes. The wing has one spar
and a plywood nose. The ailerons are large. The cross
section of the fuselage is oval. In the very latest model, the
" Westpreussen," the wing rests directly upon the highlystreamlined
fuselage. The skid has rubber buffers.
There is a striking resemblance between the forms of the
" Westpreussen/' the " Lore," and the " Starkenburg."
All these three machines are from the Darmstadt School.
The " Lore," which was so successful in Hirth's skilful
hands in the 1929 competitions, is typical of the construction
from this school. A small structure is erected above
the fuselage which bears the wing. The pilot sits immediately
beneath the front part of the wing. The body has an
oval cross-section, tapering to a fine edge underneath.
When viewed from the side, the fuselage is deeper than in