Talk:List of gliders
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of the Aviation WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions. | ||||||
| List | This article has been rated as List-Class on the quality scale. | ||||||
|
|||||||
Is TeST a serious builder, or is it a test entry?
In the list for Alexander Schleicher, there seem to be a number of bugus entries that don't belong in the list.
Yes, TesT manufactures a light motorglider.Francisco de Almeida 19:27, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Schleicher started his business by building small numbers of gliders designed by himself or (more often) by others, early in the twentieth century. This may explain those apparently spurious entries. The list comes from the German wiki.Francisco de Almeida 19:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
User DHaluza has requested that the issue of rocket powered gliders be discussed in the Talk page. Well, rocket powered gliders have a long and distinguished history. As far as I recall, Alexander Lippisch and others were already experimenting with man carrying gliders powered by rockets in 1928 (e.g. the 'Ente'), in research that would many years later be militarised and lead to the Me 163 rocket interceptor. Opel and Valier, Julius Hatry, and Ettore Cattaneo all built rocket-launched gliders before the end of the twenties. Since then, many other instances of gliders with rockets or turbines for self-launching have occured.
There is no contradiction in a powered glider. In fact, nowadays up to 70% of all gliders built leave the factory already with some auxiliary means of propulsion installed. Some of these gliders easily exceed the climb performance of lower-powered general aviation airplanes. Nevertheless, they are unmistakeably gliders, just as much as a sailing boat with an auxiliary engine is still a sailing boat, conceived and optimised for cruising under sail.
The X-15, as well as other projects influenced by it such as the stillborn Dynasoar and the present-day shuttles, were designed to re-enter the atmosphere and land as pure gliders. It is noteworthy that the concept was developed in a research environment where test-pilots were routinely exposed to conventional gliders and where there was considerable interest in general gliding flight, as evidenced by experimentation with Rogallo wings and by the development of the first lifting bodies by the same people, around the same time and place. These pilots did see the rocket-powered X-15 as a glider.
For glider pilots, at least, its a no-brainer. 89.26.203.111 22:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Inclusion of rocket powered gliders
The rocket powered gliders like the Me 163 Komet and X-15 are gliders in part of their flight by default - at that stage they have exhausted their fuel. You could by that token argue that the Fairey Fireflash was a glider. As such I do not believe that such aircraft belong in the main listing. GraemeLeggett 08:37, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
