This is the Alpenbrise (alpine breeze) a 4 meter glider designed by our friend James Hammond. The Alpinbrise is available in two layups, the standard and the Super Sport. The Super Sport, has additional carbon in the layup providing greater stiffness for high speed performance flying.
The nose of the fuselage was designed "round" to be able to accommodate a spinner if the plane is to be electrified.
The flight envelope is described as an "all rounder"; making good use of marginal lift on light days and displaying excellent energy retention when ballasted for high energy days. The Alpenbrise sports a relatively high aspect ratio at a bit over 22:1. This gives a good balance between all out speed and agility in turns but also distributes lift more evenly over the 4 meter wing. This improved lift distribution allows better performance when flying lower wing loading, while simultaneously providing increased tip stall resistance.
The wing planform in my opinion is gorgeous with its semi elliptical lines and small wing tip cords; if thats not special enough, there's the "sinusoidal" wave spar on the inside.
Think lower weight and higher mechanical stiffness, it's a win win. The horizontal tail plane also has the sine wave spar. The ailerons and flaps are top driven and bottom hinged allowing short, ie. stiff, pushrods between the servos and control surfaces. The servos for the tail group are located in the aft end of the boom, again allowing for very short and stiff push rods. All control surfaces are provided with wipers (gap seals).
There is a lot of room for ballast in this aircraft. Peruse this pictures above and look at the picture of the wing roots. The widest rectangular opening is for the wing joiner. The wing joiner itself is hollow and can be loaded with ballast bars. The two rectangular openings on either side of the joiner pocket are also ballast bays.
Performance
I could try and get wordy here, describing the Alpenbrises flight characteristics, or you can watch this video and see for yourself.
Alpenbrise 2.mp4 from Iain Medley-Rose on Vimeo.
- Wingspan: 4.000 mm (157”)
- Wing area: 76,3 dm² (1,182 Sq.”)
- Center of gravity: 104-108 mm
- Flight weight glider: 4.05Kg to 4.3Kg
- Flight weight e-glider: 4900 gr.
- Airfoil: JH35-9 - JH35-8 (high response type)