DG aircraft construction

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DG Flugzeugbau GmbH
legal form GmbH
Seat Bruchsal , Germany
management Karl Friedrich Weber, Holger Back
Number of employees 54 (2014)
Branch Aircraft construction
Website www.dg-flugzeugbau.de

The DG Flugzeugbau GmbH in Bruchsal and its predecessor deals since 1973 with the manufacture and sale of aircraft, especially gliders . The company emerged from Glaser-Dirks Flugzeugbau GmbH , which was founded by Gerhard Glaser and Wilhelm Dirks . The company is based in Bruchsal. The current managing directors are Karl Friedrich Weber and Holger Back. The company shares are held by Karl Friedrich and Eva-Marie Weber. The company has 54 employees (as of 2014). Since the insolvency of the aircraft manufacturer Rolladen Schneider Flugzeugbau in 2003, DG-Flugzeugbau has also looked after the “LS-Flugzeugbau” brand.

history

Glaser Dirks

Building on the experience of Wilhelm Dirks at the Darmstadt Academic Aviation Group, he designed the Glaser Dirks DG-100 , which had its maiden flight in May 1974. In 1977 the new development Glaser-Dirks DG-200 followed . In 1978 a cooperation with the Slovenian company Elan was decided. The aircraft DG-100 ELAN, DG-300 ELAN and DG-500 ELAN were built in the following years by ELAN and from 1999 by the successor company AMS Flight . This collaboration ended at the end of 2004. From 1980, the company manufactured parts of the DG-200C from carbon fiber reinforced plastic .

DG-808B 18 m at self launch

With the Glaser-Dirks DG-400 , the product portfolio was expanded to include a motor glider in 1981 . The DEI engine display and control unit made it possible for technically inexperienced people to operate the motorized aircraft. In the following years the two-seater Glaser-Dirks DG-500 and DG Flugzeugbau DG-1000 and the 18-m aircraft Glaser-Dirks DG-600 and Glaser-Dirks DG-800 were created . All aircraft are available motorized. Due to delivery problems with the engine of the self-starting DG-800A and thus delays in delivery of this type of aircraft, the company Glaser-Dirks Flugzeugbau GmbH went bankrupt in the spring of 1996.

DG aircraft construction

In May 1996, Karl Friedrich Weber, his wife Eva-Marie Weber and (temporarily) Gerhard Wolff found financially strong investors, and the successor company DG Flugzeugbau GmbH was founded. Weber invested in the further development of the DG-800, in the new development of the two-seater DG-1000 and in a modern production facility directly at the Bruchsal airfield. This was put into operation in December 2000.

In the same year the first flight of the newly developed DG-1000 S took place, in 2004 the version with homecoming aid followed. In April 2010 the first self-starting version of the two-seater DG-1001M was delivered.

In 2003 DG Flugzeugbau took over the financially troubled company Rolladen Schneider Flugzeugbau GmbH and closed its location in Egelsbach. Shortly thereafter, Rolladen Schneider went bankrupt. The particularly successful standard class aircraft LS8 will then continue to be built in series by DG Flugzeugbau and has been further developed. The last LS type LS10 has also been further developed for series production and is now in production. In addition, DG-Flugzeugbau received the type support for the discontinued types LS1 , LS3 and LS9 . The models LS4 and LS6 , including the production tools , were taken over from the AMS company in Slovenia. However, until the production of gliders was discontinued in 2009, only a few LS4 and no LS6 were built there. The prototype support of the two types was finally taken over by DG again. At this point, after 26 years, the collaboration between the two companies also ended.

In the winter of 2009 Karl Friedrich Weber announced that a fee-based maintenance contract would have to be agreed with DG Flugzeugbau GmbH to continue the type maintenance of older DG and LS sailplane types, as the previous maintenance was uneconomical. Because of the fee that had to be paid, this met with resistance from aviation athletes and clubs, and the value of used DG and LS aircraft has fallen continuously since then.

Future of the company

In 2003 Karl-Friedrich Weber founded DG-Kunststofftechnik GmbH with the aim of applying the know-how gained in aircraft construction in other areas of industry. In the meantime, combined with aircraft construction, plastics technology is intended to ensure the future viability of DG Flugzeugbau.

Examples of the areas "Composite" and "Engineering" are the production of:

  • Wind turbines
  • Ship propellers
  • Medwalls (medical equipment carriers in ambulance planes and helicopters)
  • High-precision coatings for electric motors
  • Facade elements
  • the composite parts for the Volocopter

Since the beginning of 2014, the company has had a CNC milling machine in order to be able to offer milling work on master models at a lower price.

Web links

Commons : DG Flugzeugbau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from August 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from October 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/index.php?id=volocopter.html