soaring into the future

Brad wrote:
I was browsing thru one of the Yahoo glider N.G.'s today and read
where the World Class design may get ressurected. That got me to
thinking:

What would the ideal recreational next generation sailplane sailplane
look like? I imagine it won't look much different from what we are
seeing now in terms of slender body shapes with sexy wingtip
treatments. And with the price of carbon fiber coming down, the
expanding growth of the composites industry and the rising use and
availability of CNC machining, it seems that there might be a niche
market for a good performing, lightweight sailplane that could be
tailored for the recreational market.

This subject has beaten the dead horse into dog food and baseballs by
now. More Purina than home runs I'm afraid ;-)
Nevertheless...
....We know what *shape* we want, that's pretty easy. What ever *It* is,
it should be shaped similarly to a Discus, LS-8, ASW-24 etc. Some solid
handling, 15 m span, flapless (I like flaps, but a volksglider should be
flapless IMHO), retractable gear, known quantity.
What would make such a beast unique, and affordable, is the way that
shape gets produced.
I suspect the prepreg technique used in the Sparrowhawk is in the right
direction. Farm out fabric cutting to someone who could laser cut many
ships worth of cloth when the price is low? Also, with all the wind
farms going up around the world, the technology involved in
manufacturing big composite wings should be improving rapidly. Perhaps
wings with a significant portion of constant cord/profile (half span?)
with a mass produced, extruded spar that is cut into a segment for each
wing (diverges from the Discus-esque shape but at what performance
cost?) could simplify production.
Posters here have said that a significant amount of the labor that goes
into the manufacture of gliders is in the sanding and polishing to get a
glassy smooth surface. On behalf of all the pilots who've happily flown
30 year old gliders with crappy finishes "Who cares?". If I could get
a solid performing glider with a dull white finish at 2/3 the price,
that's fine with me. Perhaps some decrease in surface waviness is
realized in the process, but modern gliders shrink significantly over
the first few years anyway, negating some of the benefit, so why pay for
sanding twice?

My $ 0.02 (On sale half price tomorrow only!)


Shawn


P.S. Sorry that this is so disjointed, dinner's ready :-)

Hi Shawn,

Here are some replies to your excellent post:

This subject has beaten the dead horse into dog food and baseballs by
now. *More Purina than home runs I'm afraid ;-)
Nevertheless...

Agree..................but the more water that goes over a ducks back,
eventually some water soaks in................I hope the same can be
said here, in a metaphorical sense.........


...We know what *shape* we want, that's pretty easy. *What ever *It* is,
it should be shaped similarly to a Discus, LS-8, ASW-24 etc.

Working on the shapes now, that's pretty easy with modern CAD
programs.

15 m span,

Agree completely, maybe even leave room for a 17m extension at the
tip.

flapless (I like flaps, but a volksglider should be
flapless IMHO),

Flaps would be easy enough to do, I think, but I would not rule out
your suggestion either, after all, it is a Volksglider.

retractable gear, known quantity.

Agree.

What would make such a beast unique, and affordable, is the way that
shape gets produced.

Have that covered


I suspect the prepreg technique used in the Sparrowhawk is in the right
direction. *

Here is disagree. Greg is fortunate to have use of the huge autoclave
at the Lancair/Columbia factory, I think.
Although Out of Autoclave could be done with the right tooling and
materials. But I think wet layup and vacuum bagging would be cheaper.


Farm out fabric cutting to someone who could laser cut many
ships worth of cloth when the price is low?

Good idea............I would guess that this would depend on the
number of ships to be produced.


*Also, with all the wind
farms going up around the world, the technology involved in
manufacturing big composite wings should be improving rapidly. *Perhaps
wings with a significant portion of constant cord/profile (half span?)
with a mass produced, extruded spar that is cut into a segment for each
wing (diverges from the Discus-esque shape but at what performance
cost?) could simplify production.

I would make a wing with an LS-3 planform. Carbon/H-60 foam core.
Graphlite spar caps.

Posters here have said that a significant amount of the labor that goes
into the manufacture of gliders is in the sanding and polishing to get a
glassy smooth surface. *On behalf of all the pilots who've happily flown
30 year old gliders with crappy finishes *"Who cares?". *If I could get
a solid performing glider with a dull white finish at 2/3 the price,
that's fine with me. *Perhaps some decrease in surface waviness is
realized in the process, but modern gliders shrink significantly over
the first few years anyway, negating some of the benefit, so why pay for
sanding twice?

Agree................throw a sandable primer coat into the molds and
have the buyer do the finishing to their standards/needs/requirements.

My $ 0.02 (On sale half price tomorrow only!)

Thanks!

Brad


P.S. *Sorry that this is so disjointed, dinner's ready *:-)

mines on hold................had to take a dog to the vets............:
(

Brad wrote:
Hi Shawn,

snip

I suspect the prepreg technique used in the Sparrowhawk is in the right
direction.

Here is disagree. Greg is fortunate to have use of the huge autoclave
at the Lancair/Columbia factory, I think.
Although Out of Autoclave could be done with the right tooling and
materials. But I think wet layup and vacuum bagging would be cheaper.

Agreed, I'm thinking to make a big dent in glider price (I'm in the
depressed Dollar US, and I *won't* buy a Chinese glider) the method of
manufacturing will have to be very different.
More composite manufacturers making aircraft and wind turbine parts
might make more autoclave space available. Heated molds are a
possibility (read about it on a wind turbine site). I suspect new
composite technology is coming along all the time (not my field). A
fuselage formed by winding carbon fiber tape around a male mold seems
pretty straightforward, spars too. I don't know if a wing could be made
with a precise enough profile in this way, interesting thought though.
I know there are specialty companies applying all sorts of new composite
technology. Farming out rather than investing in house might make a lot
of sense in the small numbers world of sailplane manufacturing. Save on
tooling, benefit from the sub's economy of scale. Certainly not
business as usual in the glider industry.

snip

P.S. Sorry that this is so disjointed, dinner's ready :-)

mines on hold.......had to take a dog to the vets......

Hope the pup's OK. Had to do this three weeks and four stitches to the
leg ago.


Shawn

Shawn wrote:
Brad wrote:
Here is disagree. Greg is fortunate to have use of the huge autoclave
at the Lancair/Columbia factory, I think.
Although Out of Autoclave could be done with the right tooling and
materials. But I think wet layup and vacuum bagging would be cheaper.

Agreed, I'm thinking to make a big dent in glider price (I'm in the
depressed Dollar US, and I *won't* buy a Chinese glider) the method of
manufacturing will have to be very different.
More composite manufacturers making aircraft and wind turbine parts
might make more autoclave space available. Heated molds are a
possibility (read about it on a wind turbine site). I suspect new
composite technology is coming along all the time (not my field). A
fuselage formed by winding carbon fiber tape around a male mold seems
pretty straightforward, spars too. I don't know if a wing could be made
with a precise enough profile in this way, interesting thought though. I
know there are specialty companies applying all sorts of new composite
technology. Farming out rather than investing in house might make a lot
of sense in the small numbers world of sailplane manufacturing. Save on
tooling, benefit from the sub's economy of scale. Certainly not
business as usual in the glider industry.

The Edgley EA9 was primarily constructed from CNC laser cut composite
honeycomb panels, wrapped around and bonded to ribs and formers.
Clearly this can't produce a super accurate wing profile, but might
result in some reduction in the labor required to produce wing or
fuselage parts.

If I remember correctly, the EA9 kit was fairly inexpensive, and could
be built in a few hundred hours. Marketing a kit built single seat
ASK-18 look-alike during the 90s was clearly a mistake. I suspect there
would be a bit more of a market for a factory built US LSA two seat
glider, if the price could be kept closer to $50K than $100K...

Marc

Marc Ramsey wrote:
Shawn wrote:
Brad wrote:
Here is disagree. Greg is fortunate to have use of the huge
autoclave at the Lancair/Columbia factory, I think. Although Out
of Autoclave could be done with the right tooling and materials.
But I think wet layup and vacuum bagging would be cheaper.

Agreed, I'm thinking to make a big dent in glider price (I'm in the
depressed Dollar US, and I *won't* buy a Chinese glider) the
method of manufacturing will have to be very different. More
composite manufacturers making aircraft and wind turbine parts
might make more autoclave space available. Heated molds are a
possibility (read about it on a wind turbine site). I suspect new
composite technology is coming along all the time (not my field).
A fuselage formed by winding carbon fiber tape around a male mold
seems pretty straightforward, spars too. I don't know if a wing
could be made with a precise enough profile in this way,
interesting thought though. I know there are specialty companies
applying all sorts of new composite technology. Farming out rather
than investing in house might make a lot of sense in the small
numbers world of sailplane manufacturing. Save on tooling, benefit
from the sub's economy of scale. Certainly not business as usual
in the glider industry.

The Edgley EA9 was primarily constructed from CNC laser cut composite
honeycomb panels, wrapped around and bonded to ribs and formers.
Clearly this can't produce a super accurate wing profile, but might
result in some reduction in the labor required to produce wing or
fuselage parts.

Different altogether than winding tape around a mold.
Also the EA9 was another exercise in butt ugly glider. Maybe that was
just the green color :-p

From this site:
http://www.advancedcompositetraders.com/html/news.html

Fiber placement and tape laying

The fiber placement process automatically places multiple individual
pre-impregnated tows onto a mandrel at high speed, using a
numerically controlled placement head to dispense, clamp, cut and
restart each tow during placement. Minimum cut length (the shortest
tow length a machine can lay down) is the essential ply-shape
determinant. The fiber placement heads can be attached to a 5-axis
gantry or retrofitted to a filament winder or delivered as a turnkey
custom system. Machines are available with dual mandrel stations to
increase productivity. Advantages of fiber place~ ment fabrication
include speed, reduced material scrap and labor costs, parts
consolidation and improved part-to-part uniformity. The process is
employed when producing large thermoset parts with complex shapes.

Tape laying is an even speedier auto~ mated process in which
prepregged tape, rather than single tows, is laid down con~
continuously to form parts. It is often used for parts with highly
complex contours or angles. Tape lay up is versatile, allowing breaks
in the process and easy direction changes. Capital expenditures for
computer-driven, automated equipment can be significant, however.
Suitable for both simple and complex parts, tape laying is the
current method of choice for wing skin panels on the F-22 Raptor
fighter jet.

As I said before, this would be farmed out to a subcontractor who's
already made the capital investment, unless the glider world sees really
amazing growth.

Shawn

There are many well known ways to reduce the manufacturing costs of
composite structures. It just takes sophisticated tooling. The problem
with gliders is that no one design has ever been made in sufficient numbers
to justify the up-front costs of that tooling. The result is hand made, low
production rate gliders and high unit costs.

The big advantage of a "one-design" is not so much in leveling the playing
field in contests, it's the hope that the design can be made in large enough
numbers for a manufacturer to justify the costs of advanced manufacturing
methods.

The wingspan or whether a glider has flaps or retractable gear doesn't
matter very much if the numbers are there. The solution doesn't lie in
designing a small, simple glider, it lies in a design that satisfies a large
number of buyers. Find that design, build it in large numbers and the unit
costs can be very low.

For example, how many buyers are there for a brand new LS-4 selling for
$25,000 - quite a few I expect.

So, how do you get it started? Don't start a new competition class,
re-jigger an old one. For example, take the sports/club class and provide a
handicap advantage for the "one-design". Any pilot can still fly whatever
but the new design will have an advantage built into its handicap. Over
time, the population of the new design will increase until a real
"one-design" class emerges.

If the design is popular enough and the rules guarantee the handicap
advantage is permanent, the manufacturer may commit to the tooling and
processes that drive down the cost. Of course, you have to have a
commitment from the manufacturer that the price will follow costs down.
Maybe the handicap advantage is only available to gliders whose price is
less than a set figure.


Bill Daniels


"Shawn" wrote in message
. ..
Brad wrote:
Hi Shawn,

snip

I suspect the prepreg technique used in the Sparrowhawk is in the right
direction.

Here is disagree. Greg is fortunate to have use of the huge autoclave
at the Lancair/Columbia factory, I think.
Although Out of Autoclave could be done with the right tooling and
materials. But I think wet layup and vacuum bagging would be cheaper.

Agreed, I'm thinking to make a big dent in glider price (I'm in the
depressed Dollar US, and I *won't* buy a Chinese glider) the method of
manufacturing will have to be very different.
More composite manufacturers making aircraft and wind turbine parts might
make more autoclave space available. Heated molds are a possibility (read
about it on a wind turbine site). I suspect new composite technology is
coming along all the time (not my field). A fuselage formed by winding
carbon fiber tape around a male mold seems pretty straightforward, spars
too. I don't know if a wing could be made with a precise enough profile
in this way, interesting thought though. I know there are specialty
companies applying all sorts of new composite technology. Farming out
rather than investing in house might make a lot of sense in the small
numbers world of sailplane manufacturing. Save on tooling, benefit from
the sub's economy of scale. Certainly not business as usual in the glider
industry.

snip

P.S. Sorry that this is so disjointed, dinner's ready :-)

mines on hold.......had to take a dog to the vets......

Hope the pup's OK. Had to do this three weeks and four stitches to the
leg ago.


Shawn

Bill Daniels wrote:
For example, how many buyers are there for a brand new LS-4 selling for
$25,000 - quite a few I expect.

Yes, you could sell one to me at that price, the trick is producing
using traditional fabrication techniques for less than $25,000 in
materials and labor. I don't think it can be done anymore...

Marc

Hi Guys,

I think that the tooling required to make the "simple" glider I
propose need not be overly "sophisticated" After being intimately
involved with the Russia kit and the Apis kit, and studying the TST-
Atlas, I really belive that these ships and manufacturing methods are
valid and produce nice aircraft. If all one looks at are the latest
from Europe, or even the racing glass over the last 20 years, you get
the impression that sophisticated tooling and elaborate parts are a
must-have. Indeed, they probably are a must have for these ships, and
these manufacturers have done a marvelous job with their tooling and
thus the parts. But a simple glider does not need all those "parts"

A fuselage plug can be made on a CNC router using REN board or any
suitable tooling medium. My put would be to use a HD REN board, make a
LH and RH plug split along BL-00, wax and PVA the heck out of it and
pull a mold. The fuselage if designed right, would not require vacuum
bagging, therefore several of the internal bits could be installed,
taped in place and co-cured along with the skin lay-up, saving a lot
of time and materials. A tool to wind a fuselage would require A LOT
of money and most likely would not appeal to anyone with high ROI
hopes. Wet lay-up is still a valid way to make a fuselage, I've layed
up several in the last few years and it is actually kinda fun!

As far as the wing goes, I think the LS-3 wing style is the way to go.
Perhaps aerodynamicaly speaking it may suffer over a modern planform,
but most of those modern planforms are on sailplanes that are state of
the art and their prices reflect that. A simple tapered planform
drives simplicity down the line: straight spar along the 40% C,
straight rear spar, straight hinge axis, straight
flaperon.................all these parts and their tooling/jigging
would be far simpler and cheaper to manufacture.

As Shawn shows in the link he posted, 3k carbon can now be found
relatively cheap, compared to a year ago when availability was scarce
and the price over $45 a yard. I would want to use the best material
for the job; if it required carbon or e-glass then use
it.................and of course a good epoxy.

I am a shop forman doing composites; we are daily designing, cutting,
and making tooling and parts and I know somthing like this can be
done. As Jaun Trippe said, it is a Sporting game...............who
wants to play?

Cheers,
Brad

PS................Shawn, glad to hear your pup is
OK.................ours is still at the vet..........

On Dec 25, 9:11*pm, Brad wrote:
I was browsing thru one of the Yahoo glider N.G.'s today and read
where the World Class design may get ressurected. That got me to
thinking:

What would the ideal recreational next generation sailplane sailplane
look like?

I reckon it would be a Discus bT. Easy to fly, easy to rig, great
performance, doesn't need a crew.

As, well, everyone has says it's all down to production costs. Modern
gliders cost a lot because the skills to build one are expensive - the
cost is the labour, not the material. You can lower the labour costs
by sourcing production from where it's cheaper, just as DG and Schempp-
Hirth have done with contracts at factories in Eastern Europe with
labour costs are less than in Germany. However composite production
skills can't just be pulled out of thin air; I've seen first hand how
good Chinese and Taiwanese metal workers are (exquisite mountain bike
frames), but I'm not sure you could just rock up there and find a
factory that could build Discuses. Even the Eastern Europeans screwed
it up at least once with the DG300, which goes to show the challenges
involved.

I don't think automated production is a possibility for two reasons.
The first is the market - with the way the market for new gliders is,
and the way gliding itself is, you couldn't guarantee the production
run needed for the set-up costs.

The second is it's really not that simple to set up automatic
production of composites - I've been following the 787 production
story closely since well before things started going wrong. Boeing
went all around the world for partners ans their major contractors -
KHI, MHI, and Alenia - were the only people in the world who could
mass-produce large composite components, and even then those companies
have built factories with systems and processes (giant autoclaves,
laser cutters, automatic lay-up machines, robot trolleys etc.) which
simply didn't exist beforehand. (Which is why Airbus are so far behind
Boeing on composite technology - when Boeing was contracting the
Japanese for production, Airbus was contracting universities for basic
R&D on composite mass-production techniques they could use in-house,
knowing that Boeing had basically used up the world's supply of
possible composite contractors.) Some of the smaller contractors have
indeed messed up, partly leading to the now well-known production
problems Boeing is having.

Which is in no way bad news for the German manufacturers. Skilled hand-
built products command incredible profit margins; as long as the
company is well-managed (I've always wondered how RS managed to go
bust after the biggest glass production run in gliding history) and
has at least a sniff of a potential customer base it's possible to do
very well in such a market.

At the end of the day I have no problem with the market for new
gliders being almost entirely very expensive hand-built products. I'm
happy buying 30-year-old aircraft which still fly pretty well and are
perfectly affordable. Not sure the US ever saw the influx of glass
gliders the UK and Europe did though and if your used market looks
like ours.


Dan

At 21:49 26 December 2007, Brad wrote:
I think that the success of the Russia proved that
there was and maybe
still is a market for these lighter sports ships. I
also sorta think
that they saturated the market, and I also think that
if the Russia
had the 'look' that we sailplane pilots have come to
expect, that they
would still be in business. That is, if their price
stayed somewhat
the same. If the Apis was around at the same time as
the Russia, I
wonder how many Russia's would have been sold? Given
that the price
point was very close and the appearance of the Apis
is so close to
what we 'expect' I think the Silent may have been around,
but don't
think there was a US distributor at the time.

Brad

Any glider which has the 'look' that a bunch of old
geezer sailplane
pilots want is doomed to fail. Soaring has to evolve
into a fun
sport which is affordable to people in their early
working years and
what a bunch of old men want won't qualify. Soaring
in America needs
high altitude high capacity winch launch locations,
two seat trainers
which are economical to buy and operate and a single
seat glider with
launch and handling capabilities similar to the trainer
so a student
doesn't need to re-learn to fly so he/she can fly it.
The K21 has already
proven to be a great training aircraft and at US$64,000.
might be
economical to buy and operate. At over $100K it can't
earn enough to
pay for itself + instructor + insurance etc... That
design could be
brought to the US, made in larger volume, simplified,
rougher surface,
and no one learning to fly would care one iota about
its performance.
Ditto for a single seat glider which could handle a
large number of winch
launches and still have a return on investment. In
a club or rental
operation people would want to go flying, to hell with
performance if it
adds significantly to cost. And they won't care about
class because they
won't be flying in competitions. That's what old geezers
with plenty of
free time do.