Peter 26.10.2024 19:00:49

To Wilhelm Dirks: he is born in Leer, state of Lower Saxony, my home state. He is the only glider constructor I know from this state, and I'm a bit of a local patriot ;-). I didn't knew that before I began to read about DG planes

To two seater: ASK 13 will come in C3, have seen drafts of it in the forum. This discussion leads to an idea to integrate two seater flying in the Vintage Series, will do it like "Others", same rules but for flights of two. Will see if the igc files gives information about that. If yes, I will do it ...

Here the translated speach by DeepL:

"Farewell to Wilhelm Dirks

For 38 years, Wilhelm Dirks was the chief designer responsible for the new and further development of DG aeroplanes. He turned 65 in August 2012 and on 6 October we celebrated his retirement.

However, the word ‘retirement’ is deliberately in inverted commas, because you don't just let a man like Wilhelm Dirks go, you keep him in the company. And so Wilhelm will continue to work for us as a freelancer for the foreseeable future and will retain his position as ‘Head of Quality Management’.

Wilhelm's career and his influence on global glider construction have been more than unusual.

In the early 70s, there was the Akaflieg in Darmstadt. Several fortunate circumstances came together here, namely that there was an institute for materials research at the technical university and that they were working very intensively on the completely new material of glass fibre reinforced plastic. And there was probably a master craftsman employed at the Akaflieg who passed on his practical knowledge to several generations of students, enabling them to use the new materials in their new designs under optimum conditions.

The result was that five engineers emerged from the Akaflieg Darmstadt who went on to shape glider construction worldwide over the following three to four decades:

• The first was Gerhard Waibel, who started working for the well-known Alexander-Schleicher company after completing his studies, where he became chief designer and father of the AS ‘W’ aeroplanes.
  
• The second was Klaus Holighaus, who also started working for an aircraft manufacturer. He later took over this company ‘Schempp-Hirth’ and turned it into a world-famous and successful manufacturer.
  
• Wolf Lemke's ideas met with the owner of a company for roller shutter construction, and so after a few years the company ‘Rolladen-Schneider’ became the well-known glider manufacturer ‘LS’.
  
• And in a similar way, Wilhelm Dirks met a building contractor during an off-road landing in a competition and founded ‘Glaser-Dirks Flugzeugbau GmbH’ with him. He thus became the father of the ‘DG’ aeroplanes.
  
• And the fifth member of this successful quintet was Heiko Friess. He went to the Federal Aviation Office, made a career there and helped the other four designers over the hurdles of getting their models approved.
  

These five young men ensured that the German glider manufacturers dominated the world market, and this situation has not changed to this day. Wilhelm was the youngest of them all and was the last to retire, bringing an entire era of glider construction to an end.

 As early as the end of the 1970s, a co-operation was established with the then still state-owned company ELAN in Yugoslavia, now Slovenia. Of course, starting up production there was initially associated with many difficulties and for years ELAN employees came to Bruchsal or Wilhelm and his team travelled to Slovenia to impart the necessary know-how. Over the years, many of the ELAN employees set up their own businesses and a large composites industry developed in this region. In this way, Wilhelm directly contributed to the development of an entire region.
As a special attraction, the owner of the very first DG-100, serial number 1, registration number ‘D-7100’, came to Wilhelm's party with his aircraft. It's unbelievable how beautiful this aeroplane still is after 40 years of use and how much its owner still enjoys it.

 
- Friedel Weber, Oct. 2012 -

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