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The Rhoenadler was designed and built by Walter Hempe,living close to the Wasserkuppe, in 1975.
The first version was the small type. Walter won the first Wasserkuppe contest, in `76 he built the bigger version and won again.
The 17m² Rhoenadler was my second homebuilt glider after the Valkyrie.
It looked like inspired by Phoenix 6B (Bill Bennett). S-shaped keeltube, fixed crossbar, no keel-pocket. 3-fold outrigger. No profile in the sail-cut, flexible battens.No luff-lines..
No. 3 batten was 20mm Aluminium tube, profiled and free-floating upwards. Downward movement was blocked to give a min. fixed washout.
Compared with "THE" state-of-art glider those days, the UP Dragonfly and its countless clones,the Rhoenadler was much more foregiving, no tendency to tip stalls. (" radial wingtips" )
Anyway, soaring half an hour was like half-hour workout in the gym.
I shared the Rhoenadler with my brother, that`s why we built another one. This time the older, smaller version..
Inspired by La Mouette`s Exo7, we got rid of the outriggers to reduce parasitic drag. Instead, we used 2 meter inner sleeves in the leading edge tubes. And we introduced profiled battens ( steam-formed wood ).
It was defenitely better than the first one. Eqipped with only a Hall tube and Barigo Altimeter, I reached 1300m above takeoff in june `79 in Campo Tures, Italy. Total airtime up to then 30 hours, 200 flights, on 100m hills.