What do you do with a worn-out Blanik?

[onetrack]

Why, you turn it into an arty-farty, Sculpture by the Sea, of course!

 

How many pilots does it take to turn a plane into a Sculpture by the Sea?

 

I gather the arty aim is represent the glider running out of steam - the corkscrew in the fuselage must represent the rubber band unwinding - and the winds bending upwards must represent the tiredness in old, worn-out wings.

 

I guess its must beat corroding or disintegrating away on a big plinth outside the clubrooms. Maybe the sculpture will bring a bit of focus back onto recreational aviation.

 

 

[winsor68]

Why, you turn it into an arty-farty, Sculpture by the Sea, of course! How many pilots does it take to turn a plane into a Sculpture by the Sea?

 

I gather the arty aim is represent the glider running out of steam - the corkscrew in the fuselage must represent the rubber band unwinding - and the winds bending upwards must represent the tiredness in old, worn-out wings.

 

I guess its must beat corroding or disintegrating away on a big plinth outside the clubrooms. Maybe the sculpture will bring a bit of focus back onto recreational aviation.

That is so sad.

 

 

[winsor68]

And in answer to your question... I reckon you chop the nose off...add a firewall and a motor...and go fly it?

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

I know of two Blaniks with motors. At last one has Daffyd LLewellyn's wing spar mods.

 

 

[facthunter]

They became unairworthy structurally. Metal planes do not last forever, though I've flown one with over 70 thousand airframe hours. (but it had DOUGLAS written on the ID plate). It's the most modern sailplane I ever flew. THAT dates ME also.. The ratling control cables, and creaking noises generally and the air noises in thermals/ turbulence were a bit off- putting to a power pilot where the engine noises mask all of that. I should do some more gliding. Its good aviating. Nev

 

 

[rollerball]

It's a 'sculpture' is it? Methinks the emperor has no clothes. Sculptors have skill and talent. That's just a tatty old Blanik that someone's stuck a few extra bits and pieces onto that detract from what used to be its classical appearance. Just my opinion as a 'peasant' of course.

 

 

[onetrack]

It's a 'sculpture' is it? Methinks the emperor has no clothes. Sculptors have skill and talent. That's just a tatty old Blanik that someone's stuck a few extra bits and pieces onto that detract from what used to be its classical appearance. Just my opinion as a 'peasant' of course

I can't help but agree. I'm of the opinion that a lot of artists are having a good laugh by hoodwinking "art experts" (and a lot of the general public) into believing that their "work" has inflated value and artistic features, that most people struggle to see. There are some clever and skilled artists out there, but there's a lot of "artists" who just produce absolute rubbish, too. Who recalls that "international artist of renown" (Christo) who specialised in wrapping buildings and areas of landscape with fabric and various other forms of sheeting, and calling it art? What a giant masturbation session, if ever there was one.

 

 

[facthunter]

Call it art and it's worth more. What a Blanik is made from won't last long in the elements. Nev

 

 

[onetrack]

Possibly not many on here remember, or know of, the great literary hoax carried out during WW2, designed to poke fun at the intellectual snobbishness and BS of the "modern" art world - and modern poetry, in particular.

 

Two poets, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, were responsible for the hoax, aimed specifically at a "modernist" Adelaide poet named Max Harris - who they believed, indulged in "intellectual w@nk" under the guise of "modernism", by producing or analysing "provocative" and "progressive" poetry. It didn't help that Harris promoted social realist ideology, communist militantism, and surrealism.

 

Lieutenant James McAuley and Corporal Harold Stewart thought it would be hilarious if they could invent a modernist poet, concoct some poetry and debunk the whole business of modernist poetry.So, in a series of mischievous creative fugues, they gleaned lines from here and there - even from the American Armed Forces guide to mosquito infestation - and put it together in what they perceived to be a brilliant imitation of the new poetic genre.

They dubbed the poet "Ern Malley", and to avoid the publishers seeking contact with him, they said that, like Keats, he had died young.

 

They then invented his sister, Ethel, who “discovered” the poetry and decided to send it to Harris to judge it for literary merit."

The funny part was, Harris was totally sucked in by the fake modernist poetry - and the fake poet - and lauded it. When the hoax was revealed, Harris was pilloried - but in an even more amusing twist, "Ern Malley" became a star.

 

Home

 

 

[Oscar]

May I be allowed a little romanticism here? Diverging somewhat from the main topic of the thread, but some might find it interesting.

 

Blaniks were the most produced glider, ever. They were roughly speaking, the C172 of the Glider world. But when they were all grounded following the Red Bull Aerobatics Team crash in 2010, the only ones cleared for flying - anywhere in the world - were the Llewellyn-modded ones. He identified the mainspar and tail structural problems and designed fixes for them, in 1978 - . something like 32 years before the failure that grounded all the rest.

 

They were intended as the initial trainer for all Russian airforce pilots. I did most of my training on Blaniks, and they are a delight to fly - though not high-performance, they just do what you ask of them, a bit like a classical English Butler... no matter how ham-fisted you may be, they never, ever, bite you back. A Gentleman's carriage.

 

I was a founding member of the ANU Gliding Club. We had a Blanik and a motor-Falke ( a flying barge with self-launching capability). Someone in the ANU club had found that the guy who was the Blanik test pilot, and then became the chief instructor for the entire Russian airforce initial training, was a resident in Canberra, and persuaded him to join us. I cannot - damn it - remember his full name, but memory suggests his first name was Jan. He had something like 12,000+ hours on Blaniks alone!

 

We persuaded him to become an Instructor for us. But he had to be checked out by the NSW head of Operations ( I think that was his title..) - Werner Geissler. I knew Werner ( a bloody good pilot..) a bit, due to family connections with GFA hierarchy. I was at our field (Currendooley, on the side of Lake George, now a huge wind farm) the day Jan came out to be checked out by Werner.

 

When that flight was over, I wandered over to Werner and quietly asked him: 'Is he any good?' Werner just said: 'Are you kidding? There is nobody in the world could be better'. Werner signed him out on the spot; I flew with Jan later that day, in the motor-Falke, and I cannot adequately describe the feeling that one was in the hands of a god... the best I could get to describing it, is that where any mortal would react maybe to within 10% of the necessary response to even the slightest change in flight parameters, he seemed to be ahead of them before they happened and his reactions were 99.99% exactly right. The nearest thing I can think of as an analogy, would be watching a Snooker master, executing a shot that not only potted the ball, but set up the next shot perfectly.

 

But - the funniest thing on that day was not the flying. Jan was a very, very reserved person, but it turned out that both he and Werner had been in the Luftwaffe in WWII, and they got chatting (in English) about their experiences of flying Me109's on raids on London, shooting up the Thames. Our ANU club President was an Englishman, in London in WWII, and you could see him visibly steaming as he also listened to their conversation.. but to give him his due, he recognised that Jan was an invaluable resource to our club, and bit his tongue.