The CVT1 Zigilo (English: Bunting) was a single-seat, 12-metre-span (39 ft) Italian training glider designed and built in Italy in the 1950s. Only one was completed.
CVT1 Zigolo | |
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Role | Single-seat medium performance training glider |
National origin | Italy |
Manufacturer | Soaring Centre of the Polytechnic of Turin (CVT) |
Designer | Alberto & Piero Morelli |
First flight | 7 April 1954 |
Number built | 1 |
The Zigolo was the first aircraft built at the Centro di Volo a Vela del Politechnico Torino, the Soaring Centre of the Polytechnic of Turin. Designed by the Morelli brothers and intended as a low cost, easy to fly, training glider of modest performance, it was completed in October 1953 after sixteen months' work.[1]
The Zigolo was a cantilever high-wing monoplane with a single-spar, single-piece wing, plywood-covered from the front spar around the leading edge to form a torsion-resistant D-box[1] and mounted on top of the fuselage with 2° of dihedral.[2] Behind the spar the wing was fabric-covered. In plan the central section was rectangular and the outer parts tapered slightly to rounded tips. Frise ailerons[2] filled more than half the span. Originally there were no wing mounted airbrakes or spoilers; rather, the Zigolo had door-type, underwing fuselage-mounted airbrakes but these failed on the first flight and were replaced by conventional spoilers.[1]
Its fuselage was decahedral in cross-section, shaped by longerons over formers with ply covering. The single-seat cockpit was immediately ahead of the wing, the upper rear of its one-piece perspex canopy blending into the leading edge. The fuselage tapered aft to a conventional tail, where a constant-chord, round-tipped tailplane and elevator was mounted on top of the fuselage, forward of the rudder hinge. The fin and rudder were straight-edged with rounded tip and heel, the rudder broad and extending down to the keel. Both tail control surfaces were unbalanced. The Zigolo had a short wooden landing skid with rubber shock absorbers which ran from the nose to under the leading edge, but the main gear was a fixed monowheel at about one-third chord. There was also a small tail bumper.[1]
The Zigolo made its first flight on 7 April 1954 at the Aeritalia Airport, Turin, flown by Adriano Mantelli. It later flew in Venice.[1]
Data from The World's Sailplanes (1958) pp.152–5[2]
General characteristics
Performance
Morelli brothers and Polytechnic of Turin (CVT) aircraft | |
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