While in Tehachapi last fall I had the great pleasure to spend a day with Howard "Chip" Burr Jr. at Skylark North gliderport and in his workshop at home. While showing me his build of the 1:6 SGU 1-7 which he had owned as a teenager in full scale, he brought out a small photo album and and asked me if I would be interested in borrowing it for a while to scan the images.
You can imagine my excitement while flipping through the pages I was viewing original prints of historic sailplanes designed and built by Bowlus, Schweizer, DFS, Schempp, Franklin, Ross, Laister, Culver and more, taken at meets throughout the United States. As part of this private collection, most, if not all of these images have never been seen by others and represent an important part of U.S. soaring history. As an example, I've done much research to locate images of the Ross Stephens and Lawrence Tech sailplanes including requests for images from the National Soaring Museum and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. To my surprise, I was now looking at images of both sailplanes that I could not locate from these sources.
Today I began the process of digitally scanning some 72 unique images of many aircraft which over the next weeks and months I will be cleaning up in my image editing software to remove dust and scratches, blemishes and correcting for contrast and levels.
Also included are the best collection of photos of Howard Sr.'s SGS 1-24 Brigadoon, which I hope to kit based upon our successful 1-23 kit in 1:4 scale. As you may or may not know, drawings by Ernest Schweizer to produce a 55 foot (16.9 m) span, high aspect ratio wing for the 1-23 went unrealized until then employee Howard Burr offered to build it on his own time using Schweizer drawings and "kitted" parts from Schweizer with Burr-designed tail planes. Its first flight was in 1953, and in 1955 was flown to second place by Howard in 1955 against a field of 25 sailplanes in the Snowbird meet held at Harris Hill.
As I complete the digital conversion and restoration of the images we will be sharing them here.
SGS 1-24 Specifications
General characteristics
* Crew: One
* Wingspan: 55 ft 6 in (16.9 m)
* Wing area: 180 ft² (14.8 m²)
* Aspect ratio: 17.10
* Wing profile: NACA 43012A, 23009
* Empty weight: 585 lb (265 kg)
* Gross weight: 785 lb (356 kg)
Performance
* Maximum glide ratio: 30 at 40 mph (80 km/h)
* Rate of sink: 120 ft/min (0.61 m/s)
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