I own and still fly the prototype Concept 70, first fully composite
sailplane built in the United States. First flight was in January 1971,
built by Art Zimmerman who started Berkshire Aircraft Company in New Jersey
to compete with the European sailplane manufacturers. He died after building
15 or so and the company folded.

Ben Jeffrey
N914RJ


"Bob Korves" bkorves@winfirstDECIMALcom wrote in message
...

"......... :-))" wrote in message
u...
First composite sailplanes were Libelle (1964), Phoebus (1964)
First composite homebuilt Vari-Eze (1975 from memory) (ignoring Jupiter
and
KR-1 which we really wooden)
First Certificated composite aircraft Windecker Eagle (Circa 1967).

Well, not quite. There was the Glasflugel BS-1, the first production
composite sailplane, first built in 1962

http://www.sailplanedirectory.com/glasflugel.htm

which was preceded by the Akaflieg (technical high school) Stuttgart FS-24
Phoenix, built in 1958 and already having a l/d (glide ratio) of 38:1.
This
was truly a composite homebuilt, but not powered as was requested by this
thread. For an overview of composite sailplane design history see

http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publica...Darlington.pdf

These were beautiful aircraft, not crude in any way, that led the way to
the
fantastic sailplanes we have today. In many ways it has been sad to see
the
homebuilding movement in this country continue again and again to reinvent
the wheel WRT composite structure when the German sailplane manufacturers
had it pretty well figured out by the mid '60s. Most of those early
Libelles and other composite sailplanes are still flying.
-Bob Korves