I have been scanning some of my old Motorgliding magazines. All are .pdf OCR (searchable) but April 1974. I am trying to keep the file sizes small. the 1974 years are 200 dpi the rest are 300 dpi.

http://cfiamerica.com/motorgliding-magazine.html

Jack Lambie's RF4D @ Flabob (Riverside) Cailfornia

May the 4's be with you/ Jörgen

Thanks very much for those mags; they make interesting and nostalgic reading.
I apologise for taking so long to getting around to reading them, but I've now devoured the first three.
Despite the grey skies and drizzle outside my hangar here in Serpentine, I've been giggling at Philip Wills's account of Rogallo hang-gliding with his son in the March 1973 issue. Having done much the same thing myself in 1982, I could sympathise and chuckle along with them.

Great stuff!

Yours, Bob

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Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV

I have really enjoyed reading these magazines. What a buzzing, blooming, booming scene the new sport of motor gliding was in the early seventies!

I particularly enjoyed Jack Lambie's articles about his exploits with Charley Webber, Mike Bittner and John Buckner. That must have been such a great, fun scene back then, flying with four brand-new Fourniers in formation to airshows and fly-ins.

I also enjoyed Tasso Proppe's articles, Doug Terman's RF5 Caribbean ferry flight tales and Robert Tawse's articles.

I guess I never previously realised what a breakthrough motorised gliders meant to the American gliding scene, where real gliding sites and airfields were widely dispersed. In England you pass a gliding field every fifty miles or less, and most fly both winch and aero-tow, so motor gliders just weren't so necessary.

I first met Fourniers in a club (Sportair at Biggin Hill) where they were used for primary powered instruction, aerobatic instruction, racing, touring and general flying but no gliding at all, so I've always regarded the soaring aspect as a coincidental secondary or even tertiary benefit, and I thought of Fourniers as what René said they were at our 1972 club dinner: "Very efficient and aerobatic personal airplanes that just happened to glide well."

Indeed, in the early seventies I was both flying Fourniers from Biggin and soaring Ka 7s and Ka 13s from Booker, and it simply didn't occur to me (or anyone else, I think) to soar in a Fournier.

Nowadays most British gliding clubs have a Motorfalke or Grob 109 for training in outlandings etc, while many private owners have turbos, and lovers of excellence cherish their Fourniers, but there is still very much a 'them' and 'us' mentality among 'pure' British glider pilots who scorn motor gliders.

It is so refreshing to see that in the States, in the seventies at least, glider pilots regarded motor gliders as a great and developing trend in soaring.

It is such a shame that your FAA employees let you down so badly.

Yours, Bob

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Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV

Just added January '74.

http://cfiamerica.com/images/PDF/Motorgliding_January-1974.pdf

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Collin Gyenes