HP-24 Kit Sailplane

06/06/2026

Today Steve Smith and I displayed HP-24 EV at the Ashland, Oregon Airport Day. The event was very well attended, and the glider got more attention than all but one or two other aircraft there. Most people we met had never seen a sailplane up close.

I demonstrated how the flight controls work, described how we fly gliders for hours and hundreds of miles, and answered every question I could. By the end of the day I had talked more than I usually do in a month.

I tried to give an HP Aircraft sticker to every child, but there were a lot more than I expected, and ran out about halfway through the day.

03/15/2026

It was a hectic three weeks, but Josh and Marika made all of their flaperons, elevators, and rudder. And all of the internal bulkheads, and many other small parts as well. Brigitta helped, and I mostly stayed out of everybody's way while not welding up the trailer bits.

03/09/2026

Just a reminder, what we're making here is parts for a 15/18m sailplane with retractable undercarriage, full-span flaperons and autoconnecting controls. It comes as a kit for construction by amateur builders.

03/09/2026

Closing the elevator

03/08/2026

A peek inside the elevator. The yellow is Kevlar for toughness. The wooden tool locates the two steel arms that drive the elevator halves. On the finished horizontal stabilizer, the arms are connected by a roller. That roller is driven by a slotted bellcrank at the top of the vertical stabilizer.

03/03/2026

For the next couple weeks we have Josh and Marika here to finish out an HP-24 kit. This week we're making flaperons. We use our molds to make the eight flaperon skins (four each inboard and outboard, four each upper and lower).

As we make each of the lower skins, we embed the eight stainless steel pintles that are the hinge pivots for the finished flaperon sections.

After we make the upper and lower skins, we bond them together along their leading and trailing edges, using the molds as closure tools.

02/05/2026

We'll be having an HP-24 build session 1 through 14 March 2026, at our facility at Siskiyou County Airport in Montague California. This isn't a full scale Akaflieg; we don't have accommodations or catering this time. But please contact me if you'd like to drop by.

We'll be making a few carbon fiber parts, but we'll mostly be laying up and assembling control surfaces using Kevlar and fiberglass.

If you're interested, email me: [email protected]

09/15/2025

08/26/2024

Typical landing in an HP-24 amateur-built experimental racing glider. Daily Beetle by Kevin MacLeod is licensed...

06/05/2024

Typical landing in an HP-24 amateur-built experimental racing gliderDaily Beetle by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licens...