There are four main reasons for the lack of homebuilt gliders in the UK:
- There is no shortage of 'hangar queens' gathering dust and unused gliders sitting in trailers which can be had for a song. You only need to look on gliderpilot.net and eBay to find them. The vintage glider club provides support to people who keep the older machines flying.
- Modern composite glider construction is not conducive to homebuilding from scratch, and if you are going for older wood or metal costruction, see 1 above.
- The BGA has quite a rigourous airworthiness process which deters all but the more experienced aircraft engineers from attempting it.
- If you are going to pay the insurance and storage costs for a glider, you would probably want a reasonably high performance one, and join a syndicate if you can't afford one outright. If you prefer going it alone you can get a hang glider which can be stored on the stairs (if you're single) or in the garage, or even a paraglider which you can keep on top of the wardrobe.
John Edgley, who designed the Optica, built a glider called the EA-9 Optimist, largely from folded honeycomb panels. It was displayed at the Farnborough airshow one year, and was later tested with eight model aircraft type electric motors for propulsion! Probably for the reasons above, it did not catch on.
http://www.retroplane.net/forum/files/optimist_195.pdf
Earlier there was the Manuel Wren? in the 50s or 60s, but I don't know much about it.
There are various self launching gliders which come under microlight & ultralight regulations. Ben Ashman's 'Flylight' company is the agent for one. See his Alatus,whcih is available as a pure glider or SSDR self launcher
Flylight Airsports Ltd. - Gliding
There is a German plans builtdesign called the ULF-1, which weighs 70kg and can be foot launched with the pilot's legs going through 'bomb doors'. It can be found here:
ULF-1 foot launched sailplane glider homebuilt aircraft plans and can be seen having an auto tow here (except that the 'auto' is a horse(!)) It looks as though it only has a front-mounted aerotow hook. A more rearward winch hook position might have got a better launch:
In the USA there are various 'Airchair' designs, Mike Sandlin being one of the main proponents of them. These are primary glider style designs built largely from alumiunium and Dacron and intended for slope soaring (although one did a 60 mile cross country). Mike offers plans free on the internet if you would like to recreate one (at your own risk). In the UK you would probably still need to involve the BGA to get it in the air legally, as SSDR (single seat deregulated microlight) doesn't appear to cover unpowered aircraft and they are not foot launchable, so can't be classed as hang gliders.
Basic Ultralight Glider
