Slingsby Falcon
| Slingsby Falcon | |
|---|---|
| Type: | Glider |
| Design country: |
Germany / Great Britain |
| Manufacturer: |
Slingsby Sailplanes, Scarborough |
| First flight: |
Summer 1931 |
| Production time: |
1931 to around 1936/37 |
| Number of pieces: |
9 Falcon 1 |
The Slingsby Type 1 (T.1) Falcon was a glider made by the British manufacturer Slingsby Sailplanes, Scarborough in the 1930s. The single-seat Falcon was to be used primarily for training purposes.
history
The production of the Falcon goes back to a visit of the German gliding pioneer Günther Groenhoff in the winter of 1930/31 in Scarborough at the gliding club (Scarborough Gliding Club) founded in 1930 by Frederick N. Slingsby and some of his friends. Slingsby was a partner in a wood processing company, which turned to the repair of gliders in addition to the furniture manufacture. On the advice of Groenhoff, Slingsby decided to replace the existing test aircraft, imported from Germany, with a replica of the falcon from the Rhön-Rossitten-Gesellschaft (RRG) designed by Alexander Lippisch in 1929 .
There was already a falcon in England, but the J. Lyons Tea Society only used it for advertising purposes. Slingsby completed his falcon in the spring of 1931, according to his information about 800 man-hours were spent on it. The aircraft, which was only given a clear coat, was christened the British Falcon .
Slingsby made the maiden flight at Levisham Moors , with schoolchildren pulling the starter rope. On the second flight, another pilot crashed the Falcon, but it could be rebuilt. Slingsby then toured England by plane in search of suitable gliding areas and also successfully took part in the 1932 National Championships near Askam-in-Furness ( Cumbria ). The Falcon was one of seven participating aircraft and flew almost seven hours in total during the five-day meeting. Mungo Buxton borrowed the plane to set a new British distance record with a 20km flight to Lake Coniston . For comparison: in the German championship flights in the same year, distances of 150 km were flown.
In late 1932, Slingsby announced that he could manufacture the Falcon at a cost of £ 95. The second Falcon was then built on behalf of Espin Hardwick, a stockbroker. The Falcon 2 (also Type 2 or T.2), which differed from the Type 1 only in the rounded wing tips and complete plywood paneling of the fuselage, had its first flight in October 1933. Slingsby then decided in 1934 to give up his cabinetmaker's workshop and dedicated himself to it under the name Slingsby Sailplanes, Scarborough completely engaged in the construction of gliders. This was combined with a temporary move to the former tram shed of the Scarborough Corporation.
In the following years eight more Falcon 1s were made. Before the Second World War, three copies, including the prototype, had to be written off as a result of accidents. The remaining aircraft were forcibly committed by the Air Training Corps (ATC), with more copies being broken during school operations.
Whereabouts
A Falcon was rebuilt during the war and received a flying boat hull and was thus able to take off from Lake Windermere in 1943 . The plane is now in the Windermere Steamboat Museum .
An original falcon that was recovered from a mountain railway shed in the Swiss Alps has been restored in Germany and can be viewed in the German Gliding Museum . A large number of original blueprints of the Falcon were discovered by Norman Ellison in 1978 in the Slingsby office building in Kirbymoorside (now: Kirkbymoorside) and used from 1984 to 1985 for a faithful, airworthy replica of the Type 1. The first flight took place in 1986. The aircraft is now part of the Russavia collection.
construction
The Falcon was hexagonal in cross-section and consisted of a wooden frame made up of six curved longerons, cross frames and diagonal stiffeners. The bow of the fuselage was planked with plywood, while the area behind the cockpit was covered with fabric. The undercarriage consisted of a rubber-sprung runner and a tail spur, and an open hook was provided under the nose for the rubber rope launch that was common at the time.
While the tail unit had a simple structure, the wing was very complex. The two box spars, swept at 12.5 °, had a composite cross-section with upper and lower straps made of pine wood, the webs (side walls) were made of plywood. The inside of the spars was stiffened with crossed struts. The wings showed a slight "seagull" kink, which made production much more difficult, but had no measurable impact on flight quality. The wing ribs, which are also difficult to manufacture and which also had to absorb the tensile stresses from the fabric covering, were only a few specimens exactly the same due to the uneven surface plan.
The wing was attached to a fuselage pylon and two vertical struts ( cabane struts ) and braced to the fuselage with V-struts.
Technical specifications
| Parameter | Data |
|---|---|
| crew | 1 |
| length | 5.26 m |
| span | 12.60 m |
| Wing area | 18.48 m² |
| Wing extension | 8.6 |
| Empty mass | 141 kg |
| Max. Takeoff mass | 231 kg |
| Profile at the root | Göttingen 535 modified |
See also
literature
- Martin Simons: Slingsby Type 1 British Falcon (Sling's Sailplanes Part 1). In: Airplane Monthly. August 1992, ISSN 0143-7240 , pp. 25-27.
Individual evidence
- ^ Original falcon in the German Gliding Museum
- ↑ T.1 Falcon 1 Replica & u = type T.1 replica in the Russavia collection ( Memento of the original from December 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
