I've been flying sailplanes for a while now. As much as I enjoy standing around a hot parking lot for a few minutes of run time or the thrill of drifting sideways through a corner side by side with another car; I really enjoy the challenge of staying aloft with no engine.
The first one I bought was a one of a kind unit, got it for $9k. Sold it for $13. Then I bought a nice DG-300 (42:1 glide ratio) for $22k and sold it for $28,500. It's a cumulative thing, it just sounds expensive. Anywho....
Recently retired, I actually wanted to GO somewhere. Head north for breakfast, take off and cruise the Greens in Vermont; go visit our son in Connecticut without the traffic stress. I bought a 1982 Grob 109a with ~1300hrs on it. They were asking $25,000.
Guys in our club buy gliders from Germany, one little nick and those guys trade up! Buy it, have the seller get it to the port at Edmen, and for $3,000 it gets to Rhode Island where we trailer it home. Someone on the other side of the country that isn't comfortable with the FAA process isn't going to bother. So you jump the hoops, fly it five time, put N numbers on it and sell it for a quick $5k profit.
I explained this to the seller and showed him a very nice Grob 109a in Germany for 12k Euros, with that in mind I offered $20k for his. He jumped on it.
Here we go.
My first ship:
My DG-300. VERY comfy, huge visibility.
The 1982 Grob 109a as received from San Francisco. (I'm in upstate New York)
The gelcoat was chalky, paint faded, pleather and carpet dry from sitting in the Cali sun. The logbook shows the valves being adjusted at 5 to 10 hour intervals, when I checked them there was NO lash, no place to put a shim. I backed off all eight set screws 1/4 - 1/2 turn just to get some slack.
Eric owns a high dollar motor glider, it's so light it will knock your fillings loose in good thermals or bumpy air. He's checking out my purchase. Mine is heavier so less effected by bumpy air. It cruises at 100 kts (~115mph) and has a 27 : 1 glide ratio. The prop is variable. On start up it is very flat, good for torque, climbing out, steep take offs. Once up there you can change the pitch of the prop helix like tossing in overdrive, same rpm = more speed. If you get climbing in thermals, you can kill the engine and the prop feathers parallel to the centerline, no drag.
The fuselage cleaned up pretty well.
The struts needed paint so I had them powdercoated. The rotors oh the ship were .001 below minimum, I contacted the mfr in Germany, "Yeah we have some, we think they'll fit; 600 Euros non-returnable". Yikes.
After poking around for months in the garage, I decided to go through the book and boxes that came with the Grob.
Hazzaaahhhh! Brandy new Cleveland calipers, rotors and pads. I just had to buy new axles! ($100)
I had my friend Mike work up some WW1 type hub cap design.
The interior wasn't pretty from the dry rotted carpet to the sun baked pleather. All of the controls were painted black. On gliders the trim handle is always green, spoilers are always blue. Unlike some, the Grob 109 has spoiler controls on each side , most have one central control; funky using the wrong hand to drive with because you have to use it to open the brakes.
All of these clean ups, changes et al were performed under the tutelage of an A&P/IA. We're legal here and safe. Granted there's no place to pull over when the engine pukes, but this thing is still a glider with a 57ft. wing span.
