The Aviomilano CPV1, also known as the Arlecchino ( en, Harlequin), was an Italian high performance sailplane built in the early 1960s. Only one was built.

Design and development

The joint designers and builders of the CPV1 were a glider pilot, Amletto Zaneti and the owner of Aviamilano, Mario Vietri. The design emphasised high performance in both weak and strong thermals. It was built at the Polytechnic University of Milan's Centre for Flight ( it, Centro Politecnico del Volo (CPV)), hence its name. Structurally the CPV1 was a wooden aircraft, covered in a mixture of

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

and fabric. It had a long span, high aspect ratio, cantilever wing, which was straight tapered and had squared tipss. It was built around a single main spar, with ply covering forward of it to and around the leading edge forming a torsion resistant D-box. Aft of the spar the wing was fabric covered. Inboard of long

aileron An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in roll (or movement around ...

s, which occupied about half the span, there were Fowler flaps and also mid chord

spoiler Spoiler is a security vulnerability on modern computer central processing units that use speculative execution. It exploits side-effects of speculative execution to improve the efficiency of Rowhammer and other related memory and cache attacks. Ac ...

s. The wing carried some dihedral and was attached to the fuselage at the shoulder wing position. The CPV1 had an

ovoid An oval () is a closed curve in a plane which resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very specific, but in some areas (projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.) it is given a more precise definition, which may include either one or ...

cross-section, plywood skinned fuselage. A long, single seat

cockpit A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft or spacecraft, from which a Pilot in command, pilot controls the aircraft. The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the ...

with a two piece canopy following the fuselage contours was placed ahead of the leading edge. Under it a landing skid reached aft to a retractable single wheel, fitted with a brake, under the forward wing. The fuselage tapered rearwards to a straight tapered tail with fabric covered control surfaces. The fin and rudder were tall, the rudder reaching down to the keel. The tailplane and elevators were at the top of the fuselage, far enough forward not to overlap with the rudder. The sole CPV1 first flew in 1963.

Specifications

References

{{Aviamilano aircraft 1960s Italian sailplanes Aircraft first flown in 1963