| Histoire résumée | Walter Haufe of Neenah, Wisconsin, USA, designed this single-seat powered sailplane and built it at a cost of $ 1,700 in 3 1/2 years of spare-time work. The wing was of wood construction, the fuselage had a steel-tube structure and the tail was of wood and had an empty weight of 470 lb (213 kg). It was powered by a 40 hp Nelson H-59 four-cylinder horizontal-opposed two-stroke air-cooled engine, driving a two-blade airscrew which lay longitudinally above the nose when not in use. For powered flight, a hand-actuated hydraulic mechanism pivoted the airscrew and engine forward through 80° and opened the cowling, the whole operation took less than a minute to complete.
Designed and built by Walter HAUFE, of Neenah, Wisconsin (USA), this single-seater high wing motor glider is powered by a 40hp Nelson H-59 four-cylinder horizontally-opposed engine mounted in the nose. This is unusual in that the engine, when stopped for soaring flight, swings back through 80° inside its cowling so that the two-blade fixed-pitch propeller,
also designed and built by Mr Haufe, is stopped in the vertical position and lies flat along the top of the cowling to minimise drag. The cooling air intakes for the cylinders are open when the engine is running but are closed when the engine is stopped. The cantilever wooden wing is of semi-elliptical planform with upturned tips, the fuselage is a fabric covered steel tube structure and the tail unit is wooden with fabric covering. Landing gear consists of a fixed monowheel and a tailskid, plus an unusual skid with small balancer wheel just behind the engine cowling to prevent the prop from touching the ground. The pilot sits under a removable cockpit canopy set into the wing leading edge. The Hawk
prototype, N1051Z, made its first flight in 1962. |
