The Slingsby T.13 Petrel was a British single-seat competition
glider
Glider may refer to:
Aircraft and transport Aircraft
* Glider (aircraft), heavier-than-air aircraft primarily intended for unpowered flight
** Glider (sailplane), a rigid-winged glider aircraft with an undercarriage, used in the sport of glidin ...
built by
Slingsby Sailplanes
Slingsby Aviation was a British aircraft manufacturer based in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, England. The company was founded to design and build gliders and sailplanes. From the early 1930s to around 1970 it built over 50% of all British c ...
just before
World War II.
Development
The Slingsby Petrel was a development of the German
Schleicher Rhönadler
The Schleicher Rhönadler, DFS Rhönadler or Jacobs Rhönadler is a high performance, single seat competition sailplane built in Germany in the 1930s. More than 65 were built.
Design and development
About 1931 the glider manufacturer Alexande ...
designed by
Hans Jacobs. It was a single-seat high-performance sailplane with a span of a little under 18 metres, built of wood with a mixture of plywood and fabric covering. It had high cantilever
gull wings, though the inner section dihedral was modest. They carried straight taper to fine and rounded tips and ailerons that extended over more than half the span. There were neither flaps nor airbrakes.
The fuselage had its maximum diameter near the nose, where the long, multipiece canopy blended in smoothly, ending at the wing leading edge. Behind the wings the fuselage tapered and became slender at the tail. The fin and the tailplane were both small in area; the rudder was large, aerodynamically balanced and extended down to the keel. The elevators were tapered, with a cut out for rudder movement. The undercarriage consisted of just a main skid from below the front of the cockpit glazing to mid chord plus a tail bumper.
Operational history
The Petrel prototype first flew in December 1938. This aircraft crashed at
Camphill, Derbyshire in the British National Championships of July 1939, killing its pilot, the speedway rider
Frank Charles. Two more were built and flew for several decades after World War II with clubs in England and
Ireland.
One of them was a competitor at the 1953 British National Championships, held again at Camphill, by then known as
Great Hucklow
Great Hucklow (Old English ''Hucca's burial mound'') is a small village and civil parish in the Derbyshire Peak District which nestles under Hucklow Edge between the villages of Tideswell and Bradwell. It has a population of about 100, includi ...
, after being bowled over in transit by a
Rotherham trolley-bus.
1953 National Gliding Championships
/ref>
Survivors
Only one Petrel, BGA651, the final aircraft, remains airworthy in 2013. It was restored by its owner, Graham Saw. It flies regularly at Vintage Glider Club
Vintage, in winemaking, is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product—wine (see Harvest (wine)). A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certa ...
meetings and has been displayed at Old Warden
Old Warden is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Central Bedfordshire district of the county of Bedfordshire, England, about south-east of the county town of Bedford.
The 2011 census shows its population as 328.
The ...
on Shuttleworth Collection
The Shuttleworth Collection is a working aeronautical and automotive collection located at the Old Warden Aerodrome, Old Warden in Bedfordshire, England. It is the oldest in the world and one of the most prestigious, due to the variety of old a ...
open days.[
]
Specifications
See also
Notes
References
*
External links
*
{{Slingsby aircraft
Gull-wing aircraft
1930s British sailplanes
Petrel
Aircraft first flown in 1938
High-wing aircraft