Italian Vintage Sailplanes
Author: Vincenzo Pedrielli
Illustrations by: Francesco Camastra
Hard Cover, 272 pages, 90 full page 3-view drawings, hundreds of
black and white and many color photographs, Copyright 2011
Dimensions: 8.7 x 11.8 x 0.79 inches
(220 x 300 x 20 mm)
Language: Both Italian and EnglishOverview
The history of Italian gliding from the beginning in 1924 in Asagio up to
the recent past. All Italian designs and their patterns are described in
detail with many excellent photos shown. Accurate 3-view scale drawings and
an appendix with profiles and cross sections give the fuselage scale model
builder all the necessary information.
From the Back Cover
This volume of 272 pages, is the result of meticulous research lasting a few
years, carried out by Vincenzo Pedrielli. It includes notes rich in
historical information and drawings from the beginning of gliding in Italy
and its growth in the past century.
The book covers the development of Italian
gliding from its birth on, through designers and builders, fuselages and
sections, up to the technical description of each individual sailplane,
skillfully drawn in the same scale by friend Francesco Camastra and
supported by a wide array of photographic documentation.
A silent flight through two wars, by young
minds, full of passion and fantasy, who established the glory of Italian
Gliding. Preface by Martin Simons
This beautiful book is an important
contribution to the history of soaring in Italy. It fills a gap in the
literature of this subject, drawing favorable attention to the work of
Italian sailplane designers, constructors and pilots.
In the English speaking world little has
been known of them hitherto. Here is the climax of years of careful
study and research by Vincenzo Pedrielli, the author.
It will become recognized as essential
for anyone who is fascinated by the story of the Italian gliding
movement as it paralleled the extraordinary worldwide growth of this
sport.
It is clear now that designers such as
Luigi Teichfuss, whose aircraft for the first time are fully described
here, and other engineers such as those of the Aeronautica Lombarda and
the students of the Milan Polytechnic, made important contributions
before 1939. The Morelli brothers
at the Gliding Centre of the Polytechnic of Torino, founded in 1952, and
Edgardo Ciani with his extraordinary Spillo of 1954 and later designs,
were fully up to date or even ahead of their contemporaries in other
European countries, Japan and the Americas. Italian sailplane designers
are now getting the recognition they fully deserve. It is
impossible now to see these splendid, and sometimes not quite so
splendid, aircraft flying, nor can pilots hope to climb into their
cockpits and take off. They can, however, be flown in smaller form.
Francesco Camastra’s accurate drawings and the photographs included will
be an invaluable resource for model makers who until now have had very
little access to detailed information of this kind.
Vincenzo and Francesco, thank you!
Martin Simon
Introduction to "Fuselages and
Sections" section of the book
A model builder’s target is to build a
replica that is as exact an image of the original as possible, right
down to the smallest detail, except for the size.
These drawings, showing the fuselage cross
sections of gliders designed up to 1940, might be useful for building a
good scale model. I remind the reader that the drawings marked with the
letter “A”, come from original plans, while the others have been carried
out from approximate 3-View-drawings or even from just photographs. The
dimensions are expressed in centimeters and extracted from original
documents while the dimensions in brackets must be considered estimated.
I hope that this drawing collection is a
good starting point for a scale project of an Italian vintage sailplane.
Vincenzo and myself are more than pleased to share any further detailed
information in our possession.
Francesco Camastra
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