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Type of aircraft
Glider
Country The Netherlands
Date 1922
Crew 1
number of passengers 1
Enginetype none
Fokker FG.1

One person glider, here flown by Fokker himself, 1922
First gliders


In august 1922 Anthony Fokker took part in the Rhon-glider competition with his FG.1 and FG.2 one- and twoseat gliders. At first he made some small jumps, but it soon showed out that this form of flying had no secrets for him.

With the FG.2 he made the first passengerflight in the world with a glider aircraft.

In october he joined a glidermeeting, organised by the Daily Mail. A few days before, he checked in in the hotel Peacehaven, not far from Newhaven on the coast of the Canal.

There he gave some first demonstrations, which trickered the Britisch press promptly to celebrate him als the first gliderpilot over England.

This was not quit accurate, because in de century before the Englishman Percy Pilcher had already experimented with his selfbuild glider.

At october 16 the meeting started. De first pilots made timescores of 1:58 seconds till 3 minutes, they flew just directly into the valley.

Fokker however, flew along the ridge of the hill and, using the upgoing warm air, made a time of 7 minutes. As passenger he took a correspondent of the Daily Mail.

 


At the end of the afternoon, Fokker made flighingtimes of more then 37 minutes.

The other competitors had closely followed the tactic of Fokker and now also made better times, but as the newspaper wrote: " Mr. Fokker showed how".