Pilot:          Felix Losberger

Club:          Fliegergruppe Gaggenau

Airfield:        Flugplatz Baden-Oos

Glider:         201 Standard Libelle – Seriennummer 354, 1972

Registration:    D-8222 “82”

In 2020 my father and I bought our standard Libelle H201b with fuselage-wing ferrings and without winglets. It was delivered to Denmark in 1972, returned to Germany around 2000 and was optimized here for competition flight. This means that the empty weight was increased to approximately 240kg by using lead in the wings instead of the water bags. After purchasing, we reversed this and installed water bags again.

After a few nice flights in 2021 and 2022, we had the opportunity to be the first Libelle to install the new Winglets NG in autumn 2022, thanks to close contact with Hanko and Christian Streifeneder. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do my first test flight with the new winglets until mid-May 2023, but it was 350km.

I was excited. Not only from the great look of the new and relatively large winglets, but also from the significantly improved flight characteristics.

The Libelle is a great and beautiful glider straight out of the box, but the NG winglets turn it into a racing machine that is so beautifully tuned and flies so well that I always find it difficult to accept the handling of other gliders.

Finally, talking about the workmanship and quality of the winglets is actually superfluous, as this is of course of the highest standard, as is the case with all Glasfaser Flugzeugservice products. The winglets are even fitted so that there are no gaps, so that assembly is sometimes a bit more difficult, but it saves you having to tape it off.
Installing the new winglets was definitely worth it, both for visual reasons and above all because of the improved flight characteristics. We are very pleased to have made this modification.

Photo 1: I was also able to keep up with our Ka6, flown by my father, also tuned by the Streifeneder family 😉
Photo 2: Flew almost 3000km in 8 days in team flights with an LS4
Photo 3: Before the first takeoff with the new winglets