Sikorsky To Acquire Schweizer Aircraft

At 23:36 29 August 2004, Mark James Boyd wrote:

2 x stall spin (the 2-33 is almost impossible to stall,
even to demo it)


Mark,
The 2-33 is very hard to stall in a convincing
way, especially with forwardish CGs. and it may self-recover
so well that fully-developed spins are impossible.
But I would be happy to show you how you can demonstrate
a fairly dramatic departure from controlled flight...

All aircraft can bite. Good trainers [like the
2-33] need some provocation.

Ian

At 13:42 03 September 2004, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 22:47:20 +1200, Bruce Hoult
wrote:


I've 'flown' Blaniks on the ground on just the main
wheel, while waiting
for the tow plane. For that matter I've done the same
in the Janus.

.... please add ASK-21, DG-505 and ASH-25 for me...


I did it in an SG-38; so there!

Heh, I hope Schweizer makes better helicopters than they did gliders.

For many years, visionary U.S. pilot/designer/builder Dick Schreder
(of HP-series fame) lobbied to allow flaps in the Standard Class. So
it was ironic when, on the first day of the first U.S. 15 Meter
National Soaring Championships in 1976 in Bryan, Ohio (Dick's home
airport), Les Horvath won the task flying a U.S.-built all-metal
sailplane with flaps: the Schweizer 1-35A!

My father's first glider was--as is still the case for many pilots
today--a Schweizer 1-26. His next was a 1-23B, a factory-modified
version of that series built, as I recall, for the World Championships
in 1952. I soloed in a 2-22 and am old enough to remember how much
better than that was the 2-33 when it first arrived at our club.

You'd have to work hard to get me back into a Schweizer now for
anything except a biennial flight review. But, as others have noted,
Schweizer's mainstream gliders have an enviable record for safety and
longevity...and holding their value.

At 53, I'm too old to offer the excuse that I didn't realize how much
I missed something until it was gone. So I hope that those workhorse
2-33s, 1-26s, etc.,--and the company and its people who served the
American market so well for so many years--are still around for a long
time to come.

Chip Bearden

Schweizer continues to provide good and timely engineering support for
all Schweizer glider owners and operators - at least they have up
until now, I don't expect that will change. The prices for their parts
and engineering drawings may be considered high, but that is normal
because of the limited supply and cost to fabricate.

It is to their credit that they did not abandon the owners of the
aircraft they manufactured, on which they probably made little or no
profit.

While some may note that they have some sort of regulatory obligation
to support their aircraft, in my experience they have exceeded that
requirement a number of times. Others may have had a different
experience.

I hope support for the gliders will continue under the new ownership,
and I have no reason to believe it will change.

Jim


wrote in message ...
Heh, I hope Schweizer makes better helicopters than they did gliders.

You'll probably be able to buy the manufacturing rights for the 2-33 on
ebay soon.

Damned right. I want to drive the price down low enough that I can
make a profit selling them to aluminum recycling plants.

As soon as they learn how to recycle epoxy and fiberglass the PWs will
go too.

In article , wrote:
Damned right. I want to drive the price down low enough that I can
make a profit selling them to aluminum recycling plants.

As soon as they learn how to recycle epoxy and fiberglass the PWs will
go too.

ROFLMAO.

c'mon Liam. Why are you holding back? Don't be shy.
Tell us how you REALLY feel.
--

------------+
Mark Boyd
Avenal, California, USA

wrote:

As soon as they learn how to recycle epoxy and fiberglass the PWs will
go too.

You must be one'a them trolls, Doodle.

What I hate is those ugly Discii-clones. They're all the same boring color and you can't
tell where the hell you're going to land when you look out the front window, because the
glide angle is so damn flat. It beats me how anybody can learn anything in one of those.

When I'm in the pattern in a good old 2-33 I just look down at a point about half way to
the horizon and I know I can hit it every time. And I never have to worry about finding
a thermal to get back home again because the breeze here in IL always keeps me real
close to the airport.

Now, next week I'm going to try Fred's PW5 and I expect to get a little farther out,
because I hear they are real easy to take apart and put together again, if I should
happen to have to walk it out to the road a piece at a time. Since those PW5 wings are
so short, I can get my wife to pick-up tow me back into the air as many times as it
takes to get back home -- as long as the Sheriff's boys don't catch us doing it in the
road. Just try that with one of those Discii! You'll bust them long wings right off on a
county road sign or a fence post before you get half way airborne.

When they do figure out how to recycle that epoxy & fiberglass stuff, we can make a
whole bunch of little PW5s out of a few of those big Kraut ships, and that will be good
for the sport as it will help keep prices down. They better hurry too, 'cause I hear the
sun light and those Ultraviolet-type death rays are eating up all that pretty smooth
glass just like mice in the grain.

We got a 1-26 out in the shed that's been in the family for more than thirty years now,
but Uncle Jim says they are too easy to fly and they'll spoil a pilot for anything else.
I figure I'm going to wait until I get real old & feeble before I take it up, so by then
it should suit me pretty well. Another thirty years should do it.

I read the other day where Paul Schweizer, a guy who did more for soaring in the US than
just about anybody, died recently. He and his brothers sold their first glider a few
years before Pearl Harbor, and most people in this country who have flown gliders at all
have probably flown in a Schweizer, especially when they were just starting out. That
means plenty of our soaring champions as well as guys like me have spent some time in
those American metal beauties before they got their heads turned by the Loreleis from
the Fatherland. In fact there's still some records set in 1-26s that have yet to be
broken by them slippery white ships, like Paul Bikle's altitude gain back in '61 of
42,305 ft out in the California desert in an E-model just like ours. I read it in one of
them SSA magazines we got in the outhouse.


Jack

Jack wrote:

In fact there's still some
records set in 1-26s that have yet to be broken by them slippery white
ships, like Paul Bikle's altitude gain back in '61 of 42,305 ft out in
the California desert in an E-model just like ours. I read it in one of
them SSA magazines we got in the outhouse.

According to the FAI, the record was set in a 1-23E. Still, closer to a
1-26 than to a fiberglass glider.


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Eric Greenwell wrote:

According to the FAI, the record was set in a 1-23E. Still, closer to a
1-26 than to a fiberglass glider.

Yeah, you're right -- must have been a fly spot on the page. Some of those magazines
have been around awhile.

I see where there's a famous movie star 1-23H for sale in NY, for only $11,000, but
that's a long ways from the CA desert.


Jack