Currently Owned by: Peter C. King

STATUS: In Service

LOCATION: Sequatchie Soaring, Chattanooga, TN
 
 
 The first Bill of Sale, November 6, 1969 transferred ownership from Schempp-Hirth to Motorless Flight Enterprises of Glastonbury, CT. They sold it on May 12, 1970 to Clarence See of Baldwinsville, NY (later DeLancey, NY).

Clarence, who was a skilled mechanic, built a run of 30 trailers that "look like a DC-3 inside". One is still with this ship. Clarence also raced the ship extensively, and apparently both damaged it and repaired it, since a Form 337 dated April 13, 1981 briefly documents some apparently significant repairs to the rudder and the left wing, including the installation of a Schempp-Hirth-provided wingtip.

See sold No. 83 to Cambridge Aero Instruments of Billerica, MA on June 6, 1984, and a year later it was sold again to Clifford A. Wilcox of Moravia, NY. Again it was quickly sold, on December 22, 1985 to its current owner, Peter King (then of Roswell, GA) and Mark Ritter. Peter bought Mark’s share on June 27, 1986, and later moved to his present address.

Peter reports that when he first purchased the ship, it had a vicious stall...no warning. It stalled at 45 kts and the left wing pointed at the ground. The problem was that the ailerons had been reflexed up like negative flaps. Resetting the throw on the pushrods turned the stall into a "pussycat".

The desirability of the Cirrus was eloquently described in the article "Why Whiskey Tango Didn’t Go Over There" in SOARING, Vol.58 (December 1994), page 35 (where Peter describes why he turned down a good offer to buy his Cirrus). It was featured in another article, "The Care and Feeding of a Parachute", by Peter King about the use of drogue chutes SOARING, Vol. 53 (September, 1989), page 29.