| T.45 Swallow | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Role | Intermediate sailplane |
| National origin | United Kingdom |
| Manufacturer | Slingsby Sailplanes Ltd. |
| First flight | 11 October 1957 |
| Number built | c.117 |
The Slingsby Type 45 Swallow was designed as a club sailplane of reasonable performance and price. One of the most successful of Slingsby's gliders in sales terms, over 100 had been built when production was ended by a 1968 factory fire. [1] [2]
The Slingsby Swallow was a wooden-framed aircraft, covered in a mixture of plywood and fabric. Its high mounted, cantilever, straight-tapered and square-tipped wing had 3.3o dihedral. It was Gaboon plywood-skinned and built around a single spruce spar, with a leading-edge torsion box. Its unbalanced ailerons were fabric covered; there were no flaps but dive brakes could be extended in pairs above and below the wings. The prototype had a 12 m span wing, but all production aircraft had their performance enhanced by an extension to 13.05 m. [1]
The forward fuselage was a plywood semi-monocoque, with the perspex enclosed cockpit immediately ahead of the wing. [1] The strong curvature of the single piece canopy in front of the pilot was later reduced, in Mk.2 aircraft, by extending it forwards. [3] In both versions, access was by removal of the canopy and a surrounding fuselage fairing. The whole fuselage was flat sided, but at the rear fabric covering was used. Fixed tail surfaces were plywood skinned and control surfaces fabric covered. [1] Fin and rudder were noticeably straight edged, the unbalanced rudder extending down to the keel. The slightly tapered tailplane was mounted on top of the fuselage and placed far enough forward that the rudder hinge was behind the elevator trailing edge, so that no cutout for rudder movement was needed. [3] The Swallow used a conventional glider undercarriage, a combination of a rubber sprung skid from nose to below the wing leading edge, plus a fixed, unsprung monowheel below mid wing and a small skid at the rear. [1]
The Swallow flew for the first time on 11 October 1957 [3] and it remained in production for 11 years. [2] About 115-120 Swallows were completed, [2] [4] though two were destroyed at the factory in a fire. Part of the uncertainty lies with kits issued by Slingsby for construction abroad. The short-span first prototype was later rebuilt as the Reussner Swift. The RAF used five Swallows, known as Swallow T.X. Mk.1, in its Air Training Corps. Approximately nine Swallows were used by branches of the Royal Air Force Gliding and Soaring Association at airfields across the world, [2] and the equivalent Royal Navy association had four. [4] 25 were sold in Spain, nine in Pakistan and four in Burma. Most of the rest flew with clubs in the UK, though a few went to Commonwealth countries and the USA.
Data from Taylor 1966, p. 401The World's Sailplanes:Die Segelflugzeuge der Welt:Les Planeurs du Monde Volume II, [5] The World's Sailplanes:Die Segelflugzeuge der Welt:Les Planeurs du Monde [6]
General characteristics
Performance
Related lists
A balsa wood model of the Swallow was featured in James May's Toy Stories season 1 Christmas special called "Flight Club," which aired on 23 December 2012 on BBC HD.
The Schleicher K 8 is a single-seat glider designed by Rudolf Kaiser and built by the Alexander Schleicher company of Germany.
The Aer-Pegaso M-100 was a single-seat glider designed and built in Italy from 1957.
The Fauvel AV.36 was a single-seat tailless glider designed in France in the 1950s by Charles Fauvel. Although the "AV" in AV.36 stands for Aile Volante, it was not a true flying wing: it featured two large fins mounted on stubby tailbooms extending back from the wing's trailing edge, and accommodated the pilot within a stubby fuselage. The aircraft was designed to be quickly disassembled for road transport, with the nose detaching, and the fins able to fold back against the trailing edge of the wing. A refined version with a slightly longer wingspan, the AV.361 was introduced in 1960.
The Schneider ES-59 Arrow is a sailplane designed and manufactured in Adelaide, South Australia in the early 1960s. The Arrow was manufactured with a one-piece wing of 13.23 metres span. It was the first Australian-built sailplane to compete in the World Gliding Championships, 1963 in Argentina. The Arrow has wood/fabric wings and tail and a wood fuselage. It has a fixed main wheel and a nose skid.
The Slingsby Type 42 Eagle was a two-seat glider designed in England from 1952.
The Slingsby T.37 Skylark 1 was a small low-cost sailplane built during 1952-3 at Kirbymoorside, Yorkshire by Slingsby Sailplanes.
The Slingsby T.6/T.23 Kirby Kite was a single-seat sport glider produced from 1935, by Fred Slingsby in Kirbymoorside, Yorkshire.
The Slingsby T.8 Kirby Tutor was a single-seat sport glider produced from 1937, by Fred Slingsby in Kirbymoorside, Yorkshire.
The Slingsby T.25 Gull 4 is a British glider designed and built by Slingsby that first flew in 1947.
The IS-5 Kaczka was a single-seat canard research glider designed and built in Poland from 1948.
The Slingsby T.30 Prefect is a 1948 British modernisation of the 1932 single-seat Grunau Baby glider. About 53 were built for civil and military training purposes.
The Slingsby T.13 Petrel was a British single-seat competition glider built by Slingsby Sailplanes just before World War II.
The Slingsby T.50 Skylark 4 was a British single seat competition glider built by Slingsby Sailplanes in the early 1960s. It sold in numbers and had success at national, though not world level competition.
The Civil Aviation Department RG-1 Rohini is an Indian two-seat training sailplane of the 1960s. A high-winged wooden monoplane, with side-by-side seating;at least 107 were built.
The Schleicher K7 Rhönadler is a West German high-wing, two-seat, glider that was designed by Rudolf Kaiser and produced by Alexander Schleicher GmbH & Co.
The Horikawa H-23B-2 is a two-seat training glider designed and built in Japan in the 1950s. It was produced in small numbers.
The Kometa-Standard was a Standard Class glider, designed and built in Bulgaria in the early 1960s. Thirty were flown by local gliding clubs.
The UTG-1 Loudon was an intermediate glider designed and built at the University of Toronto in Canada during the late 1940s.
The IS-2 was an intermediate training glider designed by Iosif Şilimon and built in Romania in the 1950s at the URMV-3 factory at Brașov.
The IS-4 was a high performance glider designed by Iosif Şilimon and built in Romania in the late 1950s at the URMV-3 factory at Braşov.
