After the RS-1, Ross was commissioned by the Soaring Society of America to design and build the RS-3 ‘Ibis’ for promotion purposes. The R-2 was quite similar to the RS-1 but the gull wing had a 48 ft. span and an all-moving tail was used. It made the first wave flight I the U.S. on…
Ross completed the two-place R-6 in 1956 with the same wing designed for the RJ-5, giving it one of the heaviest wing loading in the world at that time. The span was subsequently increased by five feet (to 18.29 m./ 60 ft). The R-6 has a metal fuselage and is equipped with dive brakes. The…
Originally having a retractable 11 kW/ 15 bhp engine and a 78 cm/ 31 in propeller, the Ranger was unable to take off on its own, so the Righter engine was fitted instead to give self- launch capability. It has a fixed main wheel plus a taxu wheel in the nose, and no glidepath control…
In 1966 Preiss converted a Schreder HP-14 into a 2-place ship with side-by-side seating (two sets of rudder pedals and a center control stick with a bar that swings from one side to the other) and a fixed landing wheel. The design used standard HP-14 wings with a 2-ft center section added in the fuselage.
A development of the Preiss RHJ-8 (itself a T- tailed, larger span, improved version of the RHJ- 7), the RHJ-9 is similar to its predecessors, but with a larger span wing. The wing has foam ribs bonded to the aluminum spar and skins. It first flew in 1978.
The Rhonbussard, which first flew in 1933, was an intermediate performance sailplane, coming in performance between the Grunau Baby and the high performance ships of the time, It lacks any spoilers, airbrakes or flaps for approach control. It has a skid landing gear, with jettisonable dolly for takeoff. One feature, which led to some notoriety,…
The Rigid Midget, designed in 1941, was the direct devolopment of the Culver Screaming Wiener with span increased by two feet and a different airfoil. Ray Parker finished third in it at the 1947 U.S. Nationals at Wichita Falls, TX where he made one 375 km/ 235 mile flight. One belongs to the National Soaring…
The RJ-5 became one of the world’s most famous sailplane when Dick Johnson flew it 861 km/ 535 miles in 1951 for a world sitance record that stood for 13 years. It was one of the first sailplanes to utilize a laminar airfoil and to archieve a glide ratio of 40 to 1. The original…
A development of the O-2 but for Open Class competition, the O-3 featured a longer span of higher aspect ratio, with trailing-edge airbrakes and a retractable gear. One was flown in several Nationals and made a flight of 694 km./ 431 miles. Two O-3’s were built, and both were subsequently motorized. A two-cylinder, in- line,…
The O-2 was designed to be a competitive Standard Class aircraft with dive brakes, a V- tail and retractable gear, and first flew in 1961. It was flown in the 1962 and 1963 Nationals and made a number of flights of more than 200 miles, one of them 474.1 km./ 294.6 miles.