The Sailplane Class @ Penn State

Sailplane Class Achievements

The sailplane class at Penn State began in 1989 with the goal of providing students “hands on” experience in the design and fabrication of high-performance gliders. Since then the class has started many projects and reached many milestones. Early on, work was focused on the design and testing of small radio-controlled gliders and the first full-scale student sailplane design.

R/C gliders have been a part of the class from the start

The completed Griffin plug to make fuselage molds from

Work on the first sailplane, known as the Griffin, was also begun at the class’s inception. The design was finished during the early 1990’s and construction of the fuselage plug followed. From the plug, molds for the aircraft were created. The first section of fuselage, intended to be a future crash-test section, was laid up from the molds during the spring of 2001.

In the late 1990’s, a kit sailplane known as the Falcon was donated to the class. Since this time much work has been done on the assembly of this aircraft. Students performed analysis to devise a fix for the root rib structural problem and repairs suggested by these analyses are currently ongoing. The most recent milestone was the joining of the Falcon’s two fuselage halves during the spring 2002 semester.

Dr. Maughmer guides a student design team

The latest class project has been the design of an Easy-to-Build sailplane, starting in early in 2002. The detailed design of this airplane is currently being finalized and construction of the first wing is slated to begin during the spring semester of 2003.