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Highlights From Dayton
Nyal Williams
The V tail glider on
the floor of the convention was a Schreder HP-18 - greatly modified. Richard
Schreder was national champion several times back in the '60s. He owned
a drafting supply company in Bryan, OH and was heavily invested in the
Bryan Airport - Piper dealer. He sunk the first German submarine patrolling
off the US Coast in WW II. He got into homebuilt air racing and came to
soaring from that. Dick took MacCready's theories to heart and was among
the first to abandon "build 'em light and fly 'em slow" (high lift/high
drag airfoils) attitudes. He started making aluminum gliders with much
higher wing loadings and simply ran off and left the competition back
then. He would build a new glider, fly it once, and then take it to the
Nationals and win by a margin so large it was embarrassing. The HP-18
is probably the best aluminum glider ever built, but it suffers at the
high speed end by comparison because a kit built aluminum leading edge
can't be made thin enough, to close enough tolerances to compete with
the Discus. Dick started a company to sell kits, Airmate HP-8 was the
first, I think. HP-9, HP-13, HP-14, RS-15 (pod and boom experiment), and
the HP-18. An HP-19 was designed but just one or two were built. Dick
died three or four years ago. His daughter has written a book about him
and she spoke at the convention in Dayton. I did not hear her. I believe
more HP-18 kits were sold and more finished than any other glider kit
ever offered. Some even belonged in CISS once upon a time. Remember, he
was a draftsman and manufacturer of drafting equipment. Someone in New
England bought the rights and have started making parts available. They
buy up old kits, partially completed, etc. Possibly, the will offer a
complete kit, but I'm not sure about that. I started a kit, built the
trailer and had the tail kit and the spar kit. Dick became paranoid about
law suits and quit selling; he wouldn't complete the kits for people who
had just bought individual portions, as in my case. He finally developed
Alzheimer's Disease. The wing had a strong box spar of aluminum, foam
ribs every 4 inches, and a thicker than usual skin that wrapped all the
way around from trailing edge to trailing edge. No rivets except at trailing
edge, no dive brakes, and 90 degree flaps for landing control. One could
put it in a tennis court, almost..
Mike
an Cheryl Beckage
The convention was
nice -- lots of wonderful planes to look at and salivate over. (Ask Brad
what his quote to me was......) I especially liked looking at the Sparrow
Hawk -- a quasi-glider/ultralight. The seminars were interesting -- I
mostly focused on safety issues. It wasn't as good as ours but it was
fun!
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