Hobie Hawk

In 1974 the Torrey Pines Gulls were a small model glider club in La Jolla, California, with members from all over San Diego. One of its club members was Mark Smith, world champion R/C glider pilot and designer of the Windward, Windfree and Wanderer. The club was interested in both slope soaring and thermal soaring with many pilots designing and building their own gliders. In this milieu a small, hand copied manuscript began to circulate describing the mathematics behind the design of the Ultimate Glider. The manuscript detailed a glider with an elipical infihedral wing and an eliptical body. Gliders were constructed from balsa, spruce and small areas of fiberglass. Not knowing how to construct eliptical shapes, the manuscript expained how to make straight edged, dihedral gliders that would approximate the mathematical ideal. One day Hobie Alter showed up at a Torrey Pines Gulls meeting. Shortly there after the Hobie Hawk, very similar in shape to the Ultimate Glider arrived on the market. Building his glider out of foam lamanated with plywood, fiberglass and ABS plastic, Hobbie Alter built an alround glider that was extremely competitive on the slope as well as the thermal field. The glider was competitive slope soarer due to its weight and clean lines, a competitive thermal glider with its 8 foot infihedral undercambered wing. The glider was virtually indestructible and sold complete for $129. One Torrey Pines Gull used to stall his Hobie Hawk 5 to 6' off the ground and tipping the glider on its side would land the entire weight of the glider on its wing tip. The eliptical wing would flex then spring the glider back into the air and the glider would fly off the Torrey Pines cliffs damage free. Balsa gliders would scratch, ding or break hitting small rocks or twigs on landing and would never tolerate such stress. The Hobie Hawk was revolutionary in design, construction materials and in price, costing no more than RTC (ready-to-cover) balsa gliders of the day. Hobie Alter appeared to take an interest in this glider, and R/C gliding in general for AbOUT a year, then disappeared to work on other things. It was rumored that Hobie Alter spent more than $50,000 on the machines required to make the Hobie Hawk

http://www.hobiehawk.com/hist.html http://tpghs.org/MarkSmithHistory.html