X-Mozilla-Keys:                                                                                 
Vance and Emily Jaqua wrote:

On Tue, 29 Jun 1999 22:10:25   Paul wrote:

Richard Sohn wrote:

virgil n. salisbury wrote:

Somebody wrote:
  It's up to the homebuilt
community to get some progress, and the homebuilt movement has
provided some great advances to GA over the last 20 years, stimulated
by Burt Rutan in 1975, IMHO.

        RAND ROBINSON, Moldless composite construction 1972 or so!!
                                        Virgil

There was an all fiberglass composite airplane certified in the late
60's
in Midland Texas by a dentist. I forgot the name of the airplane.

The primary structure of the RAND ROBINSON was and still is wood.
What little plastic there was in the orginal airplane was not load
bearing.

Paul Lamar

The first all plastic sailplane was designed  in the early 50's by Dr.
Eppler and was built and flown in 1956 or 57 with the name of Phoebus.

Richard.

Boy, that approaches the chicken and the egg, and
depends heavily on your defination of a composite
airplane - The certified plane was the Windecker
Eagle, and I have heard they made about a dozen
tho each had to be certiied individually as Cirrus
is facing temporarily (no production certificate).

I personally have a faint memory of a fiberglass
over foam (ala Rutan) at an air race display in the
midwest in the late 50's, and of course component
parts in fiberglass back thru WW II. Rutan certainly
popularized it for home builts - but the German
glass sailplanes were well on their way. Vance

 
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