In December 1966 an article appeared in Soaring magazine entitled ‘There’s Fiberglass in Your Future’. The Libelle, the first of the Glasflügels, German for “glass wing”, marked the beginning of a radical change in the development of sailplanes and in the sport of soaring.
THE ALLURE OF Terry Delore’s historic Libelle GGK, known these days as “Shrek”. Now fitted with winglets to bring it into the modern era this little ship has no trouble flying long distance flights, even on winter days’. This is the ship Abbey Delore is pining for (see
The Hutter H-301 Libelle, was introduced to the world in 1964. The Libelle and its various incarnations (H-301, H-301B, H-201, H-201B Standard Libelle and the Club Libelle 205) went on to take the soaring world by storm, ranking in the top numbers of contests around the world for several years, becoming the favourite of soaring pilots everywhere and talked about as the glider nearly every pilot would like to own. That original Libelle was designed and built by Wolfgang Hutter and the husband and wife team of Eugen and Ursula Hanle, the founders of the Glasflugel company. The design process began first in the various rooms of the Hanle house and later in workshops. Surprisingly the Dragonfly [as they called it] was a development from the jet-powered self-launching H-30TS built by Wolfgang which was itself a development of the diminutive wooden
article last issue)
This story was printed in the American Soaring magazine in June. It was brought to our attention by Graham Lake of the Auckland Aviation Sport Club. Graham is an enthusiastic Libelle pilot and he will be following this up with an article on Libelles in New Zealand very soon. This slightly abridged version is reproduced with the permission of the editor of Soaring and the author of the article. 16
August 2009
