Australian Aviation History

tgh

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Apr 23, 2006
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Kookaburra's evocative glider pics in the favourite photo's thread sent me rummaging.
Sadly my pics are mostly very poor quality, but I am working on scanning some history from the mess.
This glider resides in the Australian Gliding museum, it was my first single seat conversion and I obtained my "C" (15mins soaring ) certificate with it… ( circa 1965..)
Here it is fitted with a canopy but it was open when I flew it.

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Our top gun sailplane , a Grunau 2Screen Shot 2021-01-01 at 11.15.47 am.png
It was fast quiet and had a good glide angle.
Technology was coming and old clunkers like this quickly became redundant.
We spent one whole day fitting thermistors to the wingtips to help us find lift, it did not work very well as I recall.
 
Here is our trainer, an ES52b (shortwing) Kookaburra.
The wing was in one piece , it required at lot of helpers to de rig and was impractical for Cross Country work.
It is being towed by our vip vehicle, a very well cared for 1936 Chrysler side valve straight 6 with a half tonne concrete block in its rear.
Aero tows were almost unknown, the fledgling club had no winch and the Chrysler , which was my weekend office for many years did sterling service as a launch towmaster. I thrashed the thing without mercy but perfected a launch style that was later copied by other auto towing clubs.
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One of the issues with autotow was that the high tensile fencing wire we used would sometimes break.
With a very limited amount of launch time pilots went from nothing to a very steep climb as quickly as possible, of course that sudden load was when we would have a cable break.
This accident happened when an instructor and pupil elected to do a 180 from a cable break just off the deck and land downwind back at the launch end.
This seems silly( and probably was) but it was also quite doable if all goes well.
I had dumped my end of the wire , was flying back and had a ringside view as they made a poorly judged landing in a cloud of dust and broke the Kooka's back. She was quite repairable and was soon back in the air.
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Living on an aerodrome in the 50's and 60's provided a magnificent passing parade of Australian light aircraft.
Essendon was the main Melbourne Airport and Moorabbin was for light aircraft.
With no radio in most aircraft , a pilot who wanted to pass through the light aircraft corridor between the city and Essendon landed at home to ring for a clearance.
My earliest memories are of tiger moths being used as cropdusters.
They were often flown by ex WWII pilots and I have sometimes been held in thrall as they told tall tales and true while they waited in the shed for the weather to clear.
Dad built a little accomodation module for them with a stretcher and a stove.
These guys were wild pilots landing and taking off across the strip and sometimes all but dragging a wingtip turning on course .
Of course time moved on , the tigers were too small with the spray tank in the front coughpit , and newer purpose built agricultural aircraft appeared.
Here is a state of the art Ceres on the ground at home.

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The raison d'etre of the Airport, apart from the Light Air Craft Corridor, was as a training facility.
The drone of a DC3 on one engine was as common as a local crow call.
They flew the DC6b's to Mangalore and the DC3's came home.
We also had a steady call from Bristol freighters, they were mostly used to transport hops from Taswegia back to Melbourne breweries.
I found the smell in the hold quite overpowering, perhaps the pilots used nose pegs...
Another regular was the Bureau of Mineral Resources, this Magnetometer equipped DC3 contained a cornucopia of state of the art electronics.
All valves and Cathode tubes, its search and recording capability could probably be managed by my iphone today.
Folks like Forrest, Reinhardt and Palmer probably owe much of their success to the activities of this government funded clunker….Screen Shot 2021-01-01 at 8.10.37 pm.png
 
Here is our trainer, an ES52b (shortwing) Kookaburra.
The wing was in one piece , it required at lot of helpers to de rig and was impractical for Cross Country work.
It is being towed by our vip vehicle, a very well cared for 1936 Chrysler side valve straight 6 with a half tonne concrete block in its rear.
Aero tows were almost unknown, the fledgling club had no winch and the Chrysler , which was my weekend office for many years did sterling service as a launch towmaster. I thrashed the thing without mercy but perfected a launch style that was later copied by other auto towing clubs.
Ahh the Kookaburra. A classic two seater trainer, and early solo aircraft. The training regime at Benalla was ab-initio training and then solo in the Kookaburra, and another 20 hours before progressing to a single seater, which in those days was the ES52 Arrow. It was a bugger to rig, as there were four lugs on the wing, that had to be aligned with four slots in the top of the fuselage, and then you had to slide two steel rods through the width of the fuselage, to pick up the lugs, out the other side and then get secured with clips. It never worked first time, and you had very little view of where the rod was going, while of course there were at least two people on each wingtip complaining about how long it was taking - and with their own ideas of "up a bit, back a bit..." etc.

It was a staggered two seater, meaning the instructor sat alongside and behind you - the instructor's knees were in line with your seat. I always liked instructing side by side, although by the time I became an instructor, we used the IS 28, which were tandem seating. But, as you were tucked in under the leading edge of the wing, visibility for the instructor was poor. And the seats were uncomfortable. Although one pilot had done her 5 hour flight for her Silver C, which was a massive feat of endurance. You sat on the left hand side, which meant you had to allow for parallax.
1975 me and my glider on tow.jpg
On tow out of Benalla, in low tow position. And yes, I am skidding to the left as I was taking the photo one handed. The 'worm' on the right hand side of the canopy is a glue repair to the canopy.

Australia was fortunate that in 1950 they invited Edmund Schneider to move to Australia from Germany and take up designing and building gliders. The early Grunau Baby, and then his build of the legendary Ka6, and then the Kookaburra, meant the Australian market had access to world class aircraft. Although, with the advances in materials and technology, the fibreglass gliders from Europe overtook what was built locally. There are still a lot of the original aircraft in service - ES-52 Kookaburra,

Although by the mid 70's I had the luxury of aerotow behind a variety of aircraft. At Benalla, there was the Auster (best avoided on hot days, as it was so slow on the climb), and two types of Pawnees - a two seater 180hp, and a single seater 150hp.
Pawnee Tug.jpg
Two Seater Pawnee

In later years the Club got rid of the Auster and purchased another 235hp Pawnee. The difference was amazing. My first tow behind the 235hp Pawnee was in an ES59 Arrow, which is a very light single seater at 280kg all up. Instead of the slow build up, running along the ground waiting to lift off and wait for the tug to become airborne, I was almost launched straight off the ground and had to recover and get the glider back down level and close to the ground for the take off run.

After moving from the Kookaburra into the single seaters, you got very used to the lighter controls. However, every three months all pilots had to do a check ride with an instructor, in the Kookaburra. It was like flying a brick - hence the name Bricka-burra. While the glide ratio was 1 in 20 in theory, it was closer to 1 in 15. In later years, when the Club got rid of the Kookaburras some members felt so nostalgic about them they bought one and put it on the flight line. It actually was in my mind a dangerous move, as we had pilots trained on the newer, higher performing two seaters, who then went onto a series of single seaters. The Kookaburra was so different to what they had experienced, especially with the higher sink rates and heavy controls, we had a few hard landings and people getting a bit close to comfort in getting back to the airstrip. Finally, the lone Kookaburra was retired.
 
20 feet forward, for every foot of height lost?

yup

but thats a bit simplistic, penetration was the name of the game as the gliders evolved.
knots x sink rate .. or distance covered per foot of altitude (lost)
The Coogee had the penetration of a barn door, it probably stalled at 20 knots or thereabout… Comparatively , the Kookaburra was positively incisive...
I actually liked it.. fresh air and all that….
Youngsters like k75 were spoiled…..
 
20 feet forward, for every foot of height lost?

yup

but thats a bit simplistic, penetration was the name of the game as the gliders evolved.
knots x sink rate .. or distance covered per foot of altitude (lost)
The Coogee had the penetration of a barn door, it probably stalled at 20 knots or thereabout… Comparatively , the Kookaburra was positively incisive...
I actually liked it.. fresh air and all that….
Youngsters like k75 were spoiled…..

Bah humbug - I actually took a flight in the replica of the Primary Glider that Ken Davies had built at Benalla - those were the days. Who needs a coughpit anyway.
Primary_01.jpg
Image from the Australian Gliding Museum Website - Alan Patching seated, Dave Darbishire standing.

And as @tgh said, penetration into wind and in strong thermal conditions was the name of the game for cross country flying and competitions. The single seaters of the day were getting close to 1 in 50 glide ratios, and today they are hitting 1 in 60 for the Open Class (meaning no restrictions on wing span, camber changing flaps, water ballast etc). Even the Standard Class (limited to 15m wing span and no flaps) are getting in excess of 1 in 42 glide ratio.

When I flew at the Alice Springs Gliding Club in the mid-late 80's we encountered very strong conditions and it wasn't unusual to load up with 100 kg of water ballast to help with the high speed performance. One down side of flying from the Bond Springs Airstrip, you were in controlled air space and were limited to just flying up and down the Stuart Highway. If you had to land out, you made sure you were near an air strip, or at worst, land on the highway (not the preferred option). On a good day, you could cruise between 10,000 - 14,000 feet, averaging 100kmh over 300km - 500km distances. I have some photos around the place of flying from Alice Springs, and the winch we used for launching that I"ll have to find.
 
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That’s more like the sort of number I was expecting. 20 to 1 is just over 3nm per thousand, and any airliner can do that.
 
That’s more like the sort of number I was expecting. 20 to 1 is just over 3nm per thousand, and any airliner can do that.
I know - and a couple of airliners have.

Flying the older gliders was a challenge; the Kookaburra I went solo in was built in 1960 (being the newest of the three the club had), and at that time was cutting edge. By 1975 less so. It had the gliding characteristics of a brick, which is why pilots who had flown the newer gliders had trouble judging the difference in the handling and performance of the older gliders. I some ways, it would be like a private pilot today, moving from a Piper Warrior into an Auster.

There is a strong Vintage Gliding Movement in Australia and Internationally, with regular events and the chance to see some of the beauties from the 1930's onwards. The Minimoa was a beautiful piece of work, with one under restoration/rebuild in Australia.
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Image from Wikipedia - on display in the Deutsches Segelflugmuseum

The Kookaburra I went solo in (VH-GRM), was the one the enthusiasts at the Club had bought and put onto the flight line. I see that it is still registered, and living in WA. Obviously, someone still loves it.
 
sigh.. bring back the good 'ol days..
Cross country was adventure unlimited, with no radio and limited rural phone services, the retrieval crew had no idea where or when they would be going.
Retrievals often ran into the night or the next day as a landing site that looked accessible from the air proved to be quite inaccessible on the ground.
Many gliders were de-rigged and carried out across rough country to the waiting trailer.
Here is a very poor pic of Dog Vanstan's home built Cherokee being de-rigged somewhere near the Victorian border after a record breaking flight in the early 60'sScreen Shot 2021-01-05 at 9.12.23 am.png
 
sigh.. bring back the good 'ol days..
Cross country was adventure unlimited, with no radio and limited rural phone services, the retrieval crew had no idea where or when they would be going.
Retrievals often ran into the night or the next day as a landing site that looked accessible from the air proved to be quite inaccessible on the ground.
Many gliders were de-rigged and carried out across rough country to the waiting trailer.
Here is a very poor pic of Dog Vanstan's home built Cherokee being de-rigged somewhere near the Victorian border after a record breaking flight in the early 60's
As I was still in school when I started gliding, money was tight and for some experience and excitement I would crew for teams during the national and state gliding competitions, as I would get free food and drink, and occasionally get to fly some of the aircraft. You got to know very quickly which aircraft (and pilots) to pick, due to how often they landed out and how easy their aircraft was to derig and rig. Glasflugel Libelles were the easiest to rig and light weight (plus didn't land out too often). The Cirrus was ok, but any two seater, especially the Blanik or IS 28 was right out.

The down side was that an airfield is a hot and lonely place during competitions. There would be a rush in the early morning to get everything ready and cleaned down, and the usual tussles between the crews to get their aircraft in the best slot in the takeoff line, if they weren't using a lottery or pre-determined choice. After launching the aircraft, you then had to wait several hours for them to reappear, or get the dreaded phone call that they had landed out 'somewhere'. Some instructions made them easy to find, the biggest issue being how far away they were. Sometimes it could be a 4-5 hour round trip to get to where they were, de-rig the glider and pack it into the trailer, transport it back to the airfield, and while the pilot was lodging their camera films and reports, rig the glider and clean it down for the next day.

One of the most memorable competitions, was the 1974 World Championships, held at Waikerie in South Australia. There was a film made about the championships "Good Start Zulu Romeo", which is brilliant (in a nerdy way) - as it shows the old style of pre-GPS starts and high speed finishes with the gliders dumping their water ballast. The Cirrus Zulu Romeo was flown by the Australian pilot Ingo Renner (who you see at 16m50s)

The reason for the call "Good Start", was that pre-GPS the start line was a 1km line marked out on the ground, and using two sets of mirrors defining a 1 km 'square' upwards that the aircraft had to pass through to mark the start of their flight (see at 5m44s). If they off to one side, or too high, then it was "Negative-High" and the glider would have to go around again - with usually a few words from the pilots. If they were ok, then it was "Good Start". To get the best out of a start, the pilots would approach the start gate at the highest possible speed, and then after the "Good Start" call, ease back to convert speed to height and go on their way. Likewise, coming home, there was no need to arrive any higher than the 500' lower safe limit, so pilots would convert height into speed to make their final glide as quick as possible. On a good day, you might start your final glide 50km out, and hope you made the right calculations about wind, lift/sink and speed. You had to photograph the turning points as you went around them, and provide the films when you returned - twin Kodak Instamatics mounted on the inside lip of the canopy were all the rage. They were checked to make sure you had rounded the turn point correctly. Nowadays of course, the gliders carry GPS loggers, so there is none of the old fashioned mystique.
 
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