A designer must be really great who can create a sailplane, which can remain in service, setting world and national records over 20 years. Such a machine was the Kranich two-seater.
The prototype was designed at DFS by Hans Jacobs in 1935 and was built in the autumn of that year. It was an enlarged and developed version of Hans Jacobs’ record breaking single seat Rhönsperber of 1935. In many respects the two were similar in shape and detailed design.
The Kranich was produced from 1935 until the late 1950’s. Many hundreds of Kranichs were built in Germany before the War, in Germany, Sweden, Spain and Czechoslovakia during the War, and in Poland, Jugoslavia and Spain after the War.
During its long service life, this first mass-produced high-performance two-seater broke almost every record, though at first world records were not easy to set because of the tremendous Soviet two-seater distance records being flown. (407km in 1937 and 619km in 1938) Also, after 1937, the German frontiers were mostly closed because of the political situation. Nevertheless, Kranichs achieved some outstanding records in Germany before the War.
MY STORY BEGINS
A few years ago I wanted to build another scale vintage glider, but this one was going to build a 6mtr 1/3 scale glider but my problems started right at the beginning as there was not many 6mtr vintage glider part kits to buy, as I found that the 6mtr glider had a very small market as kits were concerned. And what there was you had to buy from europe, on the vintage glider circuit there is a very low percentage of these 6mtr gliders, there is a slight turn around now because of some dedicated tug pilots we get a chance to fly these very large gliders.
I found the only one place at the time that would do a part kit for the Kranich but the cost was really over the top at over €2000 this also include the plans, and they would not cell me the plans either, so now I'm thinking will this build ever start. After a couple of weeks I found a german publicist that had a 1/4 scale set of drawings, this looked like the closet I was going to get to build the Kranich.
THE DRAWINGS
About 6 days later the drawings came through the door which was amazing considering I had not paid for them yet I only managed I thought over a couple of days got them to understand what I wanted, it seemed they understood better then I thought. when I opened the drawings my problems started as of course all the words are in german, so the tools for this job started with a laptop with a translator, a set of verniers and a calculator never before have I needed these items and of course a printer copier. the reason for these bites was that every part of this build had to be scaled up by 1.33 to get to 1/3 scale.
THE FUSELAGE
The fuselage was built on my 3mtr jig as you can see quite a bit of ply is wasted to allow the jig to be used, but this does help to keep the fuselage straight. All formers up to the rear of the cocpit were made from birch ply and all the rest back to the tail are made from lite ply, the spruce main struts were bought from Slec as they can supply very long pieces of spruce where no one else can, but whe the spruce was spliced because of he shapes that was required , large splices are far better then short splicing because there are oils in the spruce that doesn.t help the gluing.
Here is the nose section that will be filled in with balsa sheet
The dash was also pre made and had its first fitting
as you can see evry strut is spruce at different thicknesses with the bass of the skid also now fitted and triangle balsa fillets for added strength, I als think that trying to stick ply to spruce was not easy and I think the triangle balsa fillets par as a good strength
The top sheet of ply that the tail will sit on but holes can be seen cut out, the square looking hole is for the fixing bolt to secure the tail to the fuselage the longer hole behind the first hole is for the special elevator linkage