YES! The first JS3 maidened today!!!

On 29 June 2017 I had the JS3 plans enlarged and Georg and I first laid them out in his workshop. Seeing the plans at the scale that we intended to build the plane (1:3.5) we needed little convincing that we were going to build this beauty. This morning, a bit over 11 months later, we maidened the first JS3 in our team. Georg, our master designer/builder, has been working very hard in the last few weeks to finalise his JS3 so that we could maiden it this week still. The plane is not quite ready yet – he still needs to finish putting on the decals and finalise the cockpit interior, but we did not want to miss the opportunity to have the majority of our team and our excellent tow pilot and team member Andi together for the first maiden.

Georg flew both the 15m (4.28m) and 18m (5.14m) versions. The 18m version has eight wing control surfaces, the 15m version has six. We expect to use the 15m version mainly for slope soaring, and the 18m version for flying on our club’s airfield. Both versions performed very well. As expected, the 18m version is amazing in thermals, whereas the 15m version is a bit more agile and faster. Georg will be finetuning the setting of the plane over the next few weeks, but on the basis of the three flight today it is clear that this is an amazing glider.

Note: larger versions of the pictures below can be obtained through clicking on them or in the gallery section

10 thoughts on “YES! The first JS3 maidened today!!!


    • Thanks Douglas! It’s not self-launching, depending on where we fly we use aerotow, a catapult or hand-launch (slope).



        • The motor is for backup or help with starting. When we fly from our airfield we start with catapult and then engage the motor to get to around 100-150m altitude, and engage the motor again if thermals are too weak to keep us up. The same when we fly on the slope, we use it when the thermals or upwinds are not strong enough to enable us to get back up to the landing site. We have around 2-3 minutes motor time in total, which is enough to use the motor 5-6 times to gain around 150m in altitude.




      • I was likely the first. You told me then, it wasn’t happening.
        Having followed the whole process, I’m quite sure I couldn’t afford one anyway.
        Pleasure watching the process though!


  1. So, has the first one been offered for sale yet?
    I’m still holding my fingers crossed making it very difficult to type!


    • Haha, the first one is still happily flying, with many hours airborne already, an amazing glider…. Note however that it’s likely that “our” JS3 will most likely be taken into production by a well known and very good producer, prototype hopefully mid-2020….stay tuned!


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