Currently Owned by: Gary Nelson

STATUS: In Service (Being Repaired 10/99)

LOCATION:  New Berlin, WI

The first Bill of Sale of record for No. 70 was executed March 13, 1969 between Schempp-Hirth and Motorless Flight Enterprises of Glastonbury, CT for $7,810.00.

Motorless Flight Enterprises then sold the plane, for $9,103.80, to the Bank of Redding on October 30, 1969. This appears to be a paperwork exercise since the Bank executed a Bill of Sale on December 24, 1969, the same date they issued a personal note for a mortgage on the ship, to William A. (Bill) Gelonek of Redding, CA. Bill applied for an Airworthiness Certificate, thorugh Charles E. Nickels as his agent, on February 9, 1970.

Bill apparently had it outfitted to the max. It originally had four variometers with two audios, a Bertea 200 channel transceiver with a slaved VOR receiver. Also a G-meter and a turn coordinator gyro. Dual oxygen bottles, too. The canopy was gray tinted. A complete set of covers was included. Spare parts included a full landing gear assembly, gear doors, and main and tail wheel assemblies and a wheel brake assembly. It’s believed that the trailer was made by Minden. One of the varios was the combined vario/airspeed indicator with an adjustable internal speed-to-fly scale by Winter (a Solfahrtgeber). The altimeter was evidently adopted from a metric scale instrument as the scale was in feet, but had 3000 ft. per revolution of the large hand (also by Winter).

Bill had flown 82 hours on the ship by May of 1973 when he stopped flying it. One day he was in a weak thermal over a rice field in the northern Sacramento Valley of California. A crop duster was working below him. When he landed his sense of equilibrium was altered and he never flew the glider again. Doctors suspect some neurological damage from a pesticide may have caused his loss of balance. It took years for him to recover from that, and meanwhile the Cirrus sat in his hanger until Charles Mueller came along in 1982.

Charles C. Mueller, of Chico, CA, purchased No. 70 on February 8, 1983, within a couple of months of his earning the private ticket. (That was the year he got back into aviation since his start as a teenager in the 1950s when he was flying Piper Cub and Aeronca tail draggers.) His first flight was that month and with a total of 25 hours in gliders, and he reports it was an easy transition. Most of Mueller’s flights were been in northern California, out of Montague. It’s also flown at Ephrata, WA; Skysailing Gliderport near Reno, NV; Minden, NV; and Turf Soaring near Phoenix, AZ. For several years Mueller took it to Parowan, Utah for some great soaring and made a couple of 500 k flights there.

Mueller reported using the drogue chute several times, mostly for the fun of it, once when really needed it on a short field outlanding. He found it wise to not open the chute when any rudder is being applied as the vortices off the bottom of the rudder will roll the chute. The chute will still open but the twist in the shroud cords will cause the release to bind and it will not be possible to let it go in flight.

Mueller also replaced the instrument panel to enlarge the leg holes (he’s 6’4") to make it more comfortable. He equipped it with a three range Cambridge CVS60S with audio and slaved averager, a 760 channel transceiver, volt meter, clock, altimeter, airspeed, and compass. He left room for couple of other instruments now, as there is a speaker in one hole and another is blank.

The first AD (elevator actuator rod replacement) was completed without trouble. Control surfaces weights and moments were well within specs. The new rod with an epoxy paint for corrosion protection.

Charles got into aerobatics and didn’t fly the Cirrus much (or at all) after 1993. The aircraft log showed 497.5 hours total time when on April 1, 1996, No. 70 was sold to its current owner.