DFS Rhönbussard
| Rhönbussard | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| A Rhönbussard getting ready for flight in Argentina | |
| Role | Single seat competition and training glider |
| National origin | Germany |
| Manufacturer | Alexander Schleicher GmbH & Co |
| Designer | Hans Jacobs |
| First flight | 1933 |
| Number built | 200+ |
The Schleicher Rhönbussard, otherwise known as the DFS Rhönbussard was intended as an intermediate glider trainer which could also fly competitively. It was designed by Hans Jacobs in Germany in the early 1930s. More than 200 were built.
By the early 1930s a large performance, size and cost gap had been opened between the kind of glider in which people learned to soar and make cross country flights, like the Grunau Baby, and the best sailplanes like the Schleicher Rhönadler. In 1932 the glider manufacturer Alexander Schleicher went to Hans Jacobs, then at the RRG (Rhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft) on the Wasserkuppe, to seek a design for a glider more advanced than the Baby but smaller, cheaper and easier to fly than Jacobs' Rhönadler. The result was the Rhönbussard (in English, the Rhön Buzzard). Since it was later produced at the Schleicher works, it is often attributed to them but in 1933 the RRG was replaced by the state owned DFS (Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug) at Darmstadt, to which Jacobs moved and continued to refine the Rhönbussard, hence the alternative name.
The Rhönbussard is an all wood and fabric aircraft, with a span 1.43 m (4 ft 8 in) greater than the Grunau Baby 1, a wing loading 50% higher and considerably more refined aerodynamically, with a cantilever wing and a smooth, oval section fuselage. The wing, lacking dihedral, has a parallel chord centre section and straight tapered outer panels ending in semi-elliptical tips. It is built around a single spar with plywood covering forward to form a torsion resisting D-box. Behind the spar the wing is fabric covered. The whole span of the trailing edge of the outer panels carries ailerons. The earliest Rhönbussards had no lift losing or drag increasing surfaces but later examples followed the development of these at the DFS: first with spoilers deployed above the upper wing surface, then with DFS-type airbrakes rotating out of both surfaces on a common span-wise axis at about mid-chord and finally with parallel ruler action Schempp-Hirth brakes mounted just behind the spar.
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