David 08.04.2025 05:38:33 Didn’t realize that. Used to fly Condor with him a few years back. He always flew late at night for me. 11 pm . He lives in Montana and flies a Phoebus out of Ronan.
The reason I mentioned the Phoebus is that I used to fly at night with a man in Montana that had one. He bought it and was given a k8. He does flights on the server using Cascade landscape.I think it’s called Montana soaring.
I read a little bit in German wikipedia.
Designer of the Astir were Richard Eppler and Hermann Nägele. The fuselage was build in forms of the Cirrus.
Eppler and Nägele were the designers of the fs-24 Phönix too, the first plast glider ever. That plane was build by Bölkow, after the Phönix Bölkow build the Phoebus, designer Eppler and Nägele.
Very interesting, I didn't knew that before
Burkhart Grob build Standard Cirrus in license first, 1974 he came out with his first plane, Astir CS. It isn't a high performing plane, but it was cheaper and good for clubs, so more than 1000 are build. I always liked that plane because of it's shape, the first version more than the later ones. But I never flew it and our club doesn't had one. The Condor Astir is the first version, I liked in my young years.
Our club wanted to buy a Speed Astir, it's the later 15 m version with flaps, so they bought an option of such a plane. When the K8 landed in a forest in 1978 they needed the money and sold the option before getting that plane. The K8 I flew is that K8 after it was rebuild.
The only plast plane they bought when I was member in that club was a second hand ASW 19, but I denied to fly it because I only wanted to fly wooden planes, and the ASW costed the double price to fly (you know I'm stubborn).
If I remember right, the Grob company started building military drones for the USA later, they don't build gliders today.
It can become a nice plane for me, because I like the usually unloved non-performance planes most :-D . Will see after my first flight, it's already in my hangar and will get its new panel tonight.