I need this page for the menu so we need to think up what we can put here. The Fuselage Finishing the Fuselage Painting the Fuselage The Vertical Stabilizer The Horizontal Stabilizer The Wing Skin The Wing Spar Shear Web The Wing Spar Flanges The Wing Control System Ailerons, Flaps, and Winglets Concordia Update – … Read more
Dick Butler (DB) has test flown Concordia and is delighted with the ship’s handling. In June and July, Dick will be busy flight testing, tuning the glider, and practicing for this summer’s WGC in Uvalde, TX. He has limited time to provide updates; however, the Café will post an occasional photo as flight testing proceeds. … Read more
On the way home last Saturday from the U.S. Team Training Camp at Chilhowee, Tennessee, your editors made a detour to Dick Butler’s workshop. We found Dick and Christian Streifeneder hard at work on the Concordia. Dick and his collaborators have been putting in very long days to get Concordia ready for flight testing this spring. With the World Championships in Uvalde, Texas only three months away, they have no time to waste.
If you’ve been following the Concordia reports here in the Café, you know that Heinz Weissenbuehler and his team at M & H Soaring spent about six weeks finishing the fuselage at their workshop in Elmira, New York. Like all of you, Bill and I had seen photos of the finished fuselage, but when we saw and touched (nee caressed) the fuselage in Dick’s shop last weekend, we were blown away by the quality of the finish. I’ve never seen another sailplane with a finish that matched Concordia’s. Heinz and his staff did an extraordinary job on the fuselage. The photos and videos below don’t begin to do it justice.
In November, Heinz Weissenbuehler of M&H Soaring drove from New York to Tennessee to pick up the Concordia fuselage and transport it back to his workshop near Elmira for filling, contouring, painting, and polishing. Click here to read the Soaring Café report. Since then, Heinz and his crew completed the filling and contouring work and … Read more
Heinz Weissenbuehler of M&H Soaring had a long weekend with an out and return from Elmira, New York to Manchester, Tennessee to fetch the Concordia fuselage, driving over 1,800 miles and 26.5 hours. With structural work complete on the fuselage it is now time to enter the next phase of the fuselage construction–to finalize aerodynamic contouring and then painting.
On Thursday, October 20th, your editors traveled to Dick and Sarah Butler’s hilltop aerie in Middle Tennessee to catch up on the latest developments in the Concordia project. We were also eager to see Christian Striefeneder, whom we met last year while he was in Tennessee helping Dick with a critical phase of construction.
Rand and Bill had the pleasure of visiting Dick Butler yesterday and got a glimpse of the fully assembled Concordia. DB has made the US Team for the 2012 WGC in Uvalde, TX and he is now working feverishly to complete the Concordia in time for the Worlds. The pictures below are of the Concordia … Read more
No one could have predicted the time and complexity involved in designing, building and installing the Concordia flight control systems. As discussed in preceding chapters, very few compromises were made in the Concordia wing design from the viewpoint of aerodynamics and handling qualities. On paper it was a lot of fun designing a supership and not having to worry about production time, associated costs, and being able to market the plane at a competitive price. In reality a lot of the design choices that were made to maximize competition performance came back to haunt us in the building and installation of controls.
The most critical area of shear web construction is the region between the main wing pins. Between the main wing pins the entire wing load must be counteracted through the shear web. Resolving this enormous load not only requires many layers of glass, known as “windings,” around the spar but also requires a large amount … Read more