Akaflieg Karlsruhe AK-X

At 21:21 13 December 2017, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 05:10:38 +0000, Michael Opitz
wrote:

Scheidhauer was a student of Dad's from the first military glider
pilot training class at the DFS in ~1937 where Dad was one of
the three original instructors. Dad also later got him a flight in a Me
163, even though he was from the Horten camp. By 1944 when
Scheidhauer first flew the Ho VI, Dad was pretty deep into getting
operational Me 163 units up and running. His glider logbook shows
one or two Ho III entries earlier, but no Ho VI. He never really
talked about the Ho VI at all. I doubt it flew much considering the
info from the above story.

This would be the next interesting topic in RAS: "What the test
pilot thought about the Me-163 as a glider"....


The Me 163 had an L/D of ~17, but the speeds were too high for
any kind of thermal flight, especially for the heavy weaponized
Me 163b version. Between the good L/D and ground effect, it was
hard to get onto the ground in a reasonable distance until Dr
Lippisch had Josef Hubert design under wing dive brakes for extra
drag. Hubert also came up with the wing slots in front of the
elevons to basically stop the tips from stalling at high AOA.

Now, Dad did thermal a fully loaded (10 people) DFS 230 for
up to an hour, and I heard that some of the passengers may have
gotten a little airsick...

Peter also wrote a book on the Hortens, but unfortunately, I don't
have a copy of it.

"Nurflügel", by Peter F. Selinger and Dr. Reimar Horten
ISBN-103900310092
ISBN-139783900310097


Thank you very much again - I'm aware of this book, but to be
honest:
I was always a little fascinated by the Horten gliders, but not enough
to buy the book since I always thought their designs were some kind
of one-trick-pony.

The book is available on Amazon Germany - just tell me if I should
get you a copy (how's your German?).

Right after I made that post, I found and bought a copy from an
American seller. Danke für's Angebot. Auf Deutsch geht's mir
auch noch recht gut.......

Gruß,

RO