American Eaglet??

Greetings,

I'm posting for a friend that is interested in the American Eaglet, self launched sailplane. Soaring's Sailplane Directory lists 26 in the US. Has anyone flown/owned an Am. Eaglet? For that matter has anyone even seen one fly?

I would appreciate any impressions, thoughts, concerns, knowledge and perhaps contacts to pass along to my friend.

Thanks in advance,,,,,Dave

Derek Piggot has flown one. Read about it at:

Interesting comment from Derek about spoilers for roll control. However, there's another problem with roll spoilers that Derek didn't mention.

When flying a slow thermaling turn, the outside wing is moving faster than the inside one. This results in spanwise asymmetry in both lift and drag with the outside wing producing more lift and drag than the inside one. This causes the familiar overbanking or tendency for a glider to steepen the bank angle. We correct for this almost without thinking by applying a little 'top aileron'. 'Adverse yaw' now works for the pilot by increasing the lift AND drag on the inside wing while decreasing both on the outside wing, restoring spanwise symmetry of lift and drag. (Assuming the designer has chosen the right amount of aileron differential.)

Ah, but try that with roll spoilers. Moving the stick toward the top wing opens the spoiler on the top wing. This decreases the lift on the outside wing but it also INCREASES the drag causing the glider to yaw to the outside. Seeing the yaw string to the outside of the turn, our pilot applies rudder into the turn which causes the overbanking to resume requiring still more top spoiler to stop it. There's just no way to fly a coordinated turn with roll spoilers.

I flew a homebuilt with roll spoilers for about 250 hours. It gave me a new appreciation for ailerons and 'adverse yaw'.

Bill Daniels

The prototype Eaglet had a knob to twist on top of the stick that drove a trim tab out on one wingtip to bias the stick back to center for a steady thermalling turn instead of holding one spoiler deflected.

I had custody of an Eaglet for a few years and was glad to unload it (it never flew a single hour) to amother one of these airplane pilots seeking the mythical cheap ultralight motorglider 'dream ship' to 'get into soaring' because they can't stand paying for a tow or waiting in line for one or can't stomach not having an engine on board at all. However, the Eaglet was just too weird and fragile and the self-launching feature never worked adequately because of the tiny fast prop in the wake of the pod (not restartable in flight, either) . I met one competent soaring pilot who had successful flights in one (and who did real well in a Monerai he also built), but even he tried to self-launch just once, found himself skimming the ground for a mile and then climbing at 100fpm, and he ripped out the engine therafter. So, it's really not a motorglider anyway. It is cute!

The Eaglet and the Monerai were early attempts at the small size but high wing-loading sailplane idea now being reprised with the Sparrowhawk and other designs. Fortunately, it looks like the new generation is going to avoid the structural dubiousness and weird control system problems of the those 1970s homebuillts.