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"Soaring is dangerous. Just look at these light airplanes they use."
That's one of the typical preconceptions you
can hear about gliding. To remedy this a bit,
I have taken some photographs of my glider while
I polished and cleaned it during the winter.
The pictures show some parts of the plane and
I have added some explaining text.
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This picture shows the plane with its two
wings in front of it. The primary task was
to polish the wings and fuselage to make
sure the finish does not get cracks. The
quality of the surface is very important,
because a rough surface will create more
drag in flight. And in addition, it does
not look nice.
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This picture shows the fuselage/wing
transition. This is the place where the
right wing is attached. The two bolts at
the fore and the aft are used to transmit
the lift forces from the wing to the
fuselage. The grey hinges in the aft
part are the places where the
aileron/airbrake/flap rods are attached
to to the mechanics in the fuselage.
They are connected automatically when
the aircraft is assembled.
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This is the respective counterpart on the wing.
You can see the two holes where the bolts are
inserted, and you can see the aileron/airbrake/flap
rods that connect to the hinges. The big thing
protracting fork-like thing is the wing's main
spar. When the aircraft is assembled, it is
connected with two rather thick bolts (see the
holes in the spar) to the other wing. So the
two parts of the wing form "one entity" and
are stable in themselves. The smaller bolts
shown in the previous pictures are used to
connect it to the fuselage.
The spar is manufactured from
carbon-fibre/glass-fibre plastics and is
very very stiff and stable. For example,
you can easily sit on that spar, even with
two or three people.
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A wing itself is roughly 7 meters long.
It has a very smooth surface. On the aft
(left) of the wing you can see the flaps
used to adapt the wing to different flight
patterns (such as speed, etc.). A wings has
about 60 kilograms of weight, the whole aircraft
is about 250 kg.
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