Soaring to the horizon and beyond with the new R-wing?
Since 2009 our single seater EB29 represents the benchmark for the Open Class. And the two seater EB29D has proven to be almost fully competitive with the single seater. The handicap is barely measurable.Nevertheless we continued thinking:What could be the next step?How could handling and performance be improved even further?
The answer is a new wing for our single seater EB29 and our two seater EB29D.
The EB29D – in fact the good old D-KOWB with the new wing as the test bed for the EB29DR - took off for the first flight 18.March 2016.
She flies beautiful and fullfills our highest expectations!
Meanwhile two more EBs with the new "R" wing took to the air.
Already in late spring Michael Sommer was able to climb into his EB29R for some comparative and long distance flights.
In Juli Pierre de Broquville received his brand new EB29DR.
After only a short familiarization he flew as a guest pilot in the Open Class of the French Nationals and finished first in this high class field of competitors. Congratulations!
Here in short some data of the new wing, which can be fitted to the
Single Seater EB29 Version EB29R
Two Seater EB29D Version EB29DR
wing span 28,0 m
wing area 14,9 m²
aspect ratio 52,6
MPW 850 kg
max loading 57 kg/m²
With this new wing EB29R and EB29DR can utilize max. wing loadings that gliders with shorter wing span can barely achieve.
And all this with the wingspan and the gliding ratio of the Open Class.
No other glider shows a higher aspect ratio!
For this „R"-wing a new family of airfoils was developed. In addition to the superior high speed performance the new airfoil shows excellent handling characteristics and performances during thermalling - even with max. wing loading.
Thereby the new „R“-wing offers the ambitious pilot option to fly even faster and greater distances, as could be done with the EB28 and EB29 family of gliders in the past. Soaring beyond the horizon? Almost!