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Les Schweizer
flies the unpainted prototype ship in 1973 at Elmira NY. |
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Schweizer 1-35 History |
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The Schweizer Brothers, Ernie, Paul and Bill Schweizer, began designing and building sailplanes when they were just teenagers. Their line of sailplanes is legendary, and they were the primary individuals that made soaring possible in the United States. They designed and built strong and safe gliders. The SGS 1-35 represented the very best of the collective talents of the Schweizer Brothers and it came about at the time where composite designs from Europe were beginning to dominate most of the sales worldwide. Few manufactures believed that a 38:1 glide ratio 15 meter span ship could be fabricated from metal, but the Schweizers did it. The SGS 1-35 design was a collective effort of Ernie, the lead designer for all the Schweizer gliders, his son Les, a recent graduate of New York University's Aeronautical School, and Ernie's nephew Stuart (Bill’s son). Design began in early 1972 and the first prototype began construction in the fall that same year. It’s first test flight was in April 1973. After 50 hours of test flights, type certification was pursued and production began in early 1974. The SGS 1-35 was designed to comply with the 1969 Standard class rules which allowed the use of flaps as well as airbrakes, but by the time production began the rules were changed that disallowed standard class’s use of flaps. As a compromise a 15m class was formed but now the 1-35 found itself trying to compete with the most advanced composite ships, like the LS2, which were "spare no expense" type designs built to win races. The demand for the 1-35 slowed just as production began due to these issues. Fortunately the Schweizer brothers were able to produce 101 SGS 1-35s over the course of 5 years and many are still in use today by sport pilots. The original 1-35 was a racing ship with retractable gear and the ability to carry up to 320 pounds of water ballast. To boost sales, a lower cost version, the "C" version, also referred to as the "club" version, was introduced that lacked these 2 main features and proved to be very popular. The SGS 1-35 line has proved to be a safe high performance sailplane that could be tied out, is easy to assemble and disassemble, and due to the strong flaps, allowed cross country pilots to land in some very small fields. SGS 1-35; 58 built SGS 1-35A; 2 built (special mods) SGS 1-35C; 41 built |
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Two generations of Schweizers posing next to the 2000th SGS sailplane, a SGS 1-35C (SN 84). Left-right; Les (Ernie’s son), W. Stuart and Paul Hardy (Paul’s sons), Ernie, Paul, and Bill. June 1978 |
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Updated: Dec 28,2003 |
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