Dave, What you saw was a Stemme S-10 motorglider, pretty much top dog on the motorglider food chain, and just a ridiculously impressive aircraft.
Not only 75'plus span, but comfortable side by side seating for two adults, fully retractable landing gear (in a tailwheel configuration) close to a 50:1 glide ratio, min sink of 112ft/min, stalls at 48mph, 700nautical mile cruise range, with powered service ceiling at 30,000 ft, revolutionary centripetal propeller deployment from a telescoping nose cone. The engine actually sits behind the occupants and drives the propeller by a torque shaft extension that runs between the two front seats to the nose cone. Single lever transition from glide to powered flight in 5 seconds. Wings are foldable by one person to normal hangar span. All ground operations can be performed with wings folded. Read the brochure at: http://www.stemmewest.com/pages/S10_E.pdf Unlike almost any other motorglider in its performance class, the S-10 is perfectly fine to use as a cruise aircraft,(in most the motor is reserved for launch-only operations) It has 139 mph turbocharged cruise speed burns maybe 5.2gal. per hr., which works out to about 27 miles per gallon. Cockpit has complete instrumentation. I'll stop before I start drooling on the keyboard here. Oh, wait, did I mention the solar panels that provide 30W of electrical power for onboard equipment when the engine is off? Lift, Scobie at Liftworx www.liftworx.com -----Original Message----- From: D Hauch [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 10:20 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [RCSE] cool visitor at field today Hi, I was flying today at one of my fields, which is a small airport. Looked over to the horizon and saw this huge glider coming in for a landing. My first thougt was, Skip Millers here! :-) It was a huge t-tail motor glider. It had a 114 hp Rotex motor, mounted in the nose. Had retracts. 77' span. It was a six servo wing, well functions anyway, and spoilers. Cruising speed was 135 knots. Cost, well I was telling my girlfriend about it and asked her what she thought it cost, and she guessed $10,000. I said I had that much in molded planes and gear in my van, only because one was a Icon. :-) (just joking Don) Cost of motor glider, 1/4 of a million. Made my hobby seem real cheap. Going to order another Icon. Dave Hauch Mich. RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
