The Centrair 201 Marianne is a
training
Training is teaching, or developing in oneself or others, any skills and knowledge or fitness that relate to specific useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one's capability, capacity, productivity and performance. I ...
glider
Glider may refer to:
Aircraft and transport Aircraft
* Glider (aircraft), heavier-than-air aircraft primarily intended for unpowered flight
** Glider (sailplane), a rigid-winged glider aircraft with an undercarriage, used in the sport of glidin ...
seating two in
tandem
Tandem, or in tandem, is an arrangement in which a team of machines, animals or people are lined up one behind another, all facing in the same direction.
The original use of the term in English was in ''tandem harness'', which is used for two ...
, designed and built in
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
in the 1980s. It was intended to replace the numerous but ageing gliders equipping French gliding clubs; when Centrair ceased trading in 1988 some eighty Mariannes had been sold, fewer than hoped.
Design and development
French government support for gliding was generous immediately after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
but was fading by the 1980s. The Fédération Français de Vol à Voile (FFVV), who administered the French gliding movement, had to become self-financing and were central players in an effort to retain a viable gliding manufacturing base in France. By that time there was a need for a new two seat training glider to replace the existing club fleet of some 270
Wassmer Bijaves, so a competition was launched and won by Centrair. The Marianne design gained financial support from the Ministry of Transport and design support from
Dassault Aviation and the Office Nationale d'Etude de Recherche Aerospatiale (ONERA).
[
The Marianne has a ]shoulder wing
A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes.
A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing con ...
mounted with 3° of dihedral. It has a single spar formed from glassfibre
Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth ...
roving
A roving is a long and narrow bundle of fiber. Rovings are produced during the process of making spun yarn from wool fleece, raw cotton, or other fibres. Their main use is as fibre prepared for spinning, but they may also be used for specialised ...
s, around which the laminar flow wing profile and ailerons
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 ...
are made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) foam and glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) sandwich. There are no flaps; double plate aluminium airbrakes extend only above the upper wing surface.[
The ]fuselage
The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraf ...
is a monocoque
Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word ''monocoque'' is a French term for "single shell".
First used for boats, ...
pod and boom structure also built with composite sandwich layers, but with carbon fibre
Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (American English), carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (Commonwealth English), carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics, carbon-fiber reinforced-thermoplastic (CFRP, CRP, CFRTP), also known as carbon fiber, carbon compo ...
added. Its T-tail
A T-tail is an empennage configuration in which the tailplane is mounted to the top of the fin. The arrangement looks like the capital letter T, hence the name. The T-tail differs from the standard configuration in which the tailplane ...
is constructed from GRP; the tailplane
A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed-wing aircraft such as helicopters and gyropla ...
carries an elevator
An elevator or lift is a cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. They a ...
. There is no provision for water ballast. The two tandem seats have a common upper line but two single piece canopies, the forward one forward hinged and the rear opening to starboard. The undercarriage is fixed, with a main monowheel, fitted with a hydraulic brake, placed at the pod-boom transition within a prominent fairing and assisted by a smaller nosewheel.[
The Marianne made its first flight on 19 September 1985 and received certification on 29 January 1987.][
There were plans for later versions: an advanced trainer with flaps and retractable undercarriage; a higher performance Marianne with longer span (20.9 m; 68 ft 7 in); and a motorized, self launching version.][ None of these seem to have been built before Centrair ceased trading after producing eighty Mariannes.][
]
Operational history
The Marianne got mixed reviews at club level: its performance was good, perhaps somewhere between that of two of its best contemporaries, the Grob Twin Astir and the Schempp-Hirth Janus
The Schempp-Hirth Janus is a high performance two-seat Glider (sailplane), glider that was built by Schempp-Hirth, Schempp-Hirth GmbH. It was the first high-performance two-seater.
Design and development
The design was by Dipl-Ing Klaus Holigha ...
, the airbrakes worked well and its build quality and viceless handling were also praised. Criticism focussed on the rear seat, which was said to be uncomfortable with restricted views, and the difficult rigging and de-rigging procedures.[
Sixty-five Mariannes appeared on the civil aircraft registers of mainland Europe in 2010.][ The September 2012 UK register lists two more.][ Another is in Australia in 2018, at Southern tableland Gliding Club.]
Variants
;201: First two prototypes.[
;201A: One only on 2010 European registers, in Belgium.][
;201B: Standard production variant with at least 63 built.][
;201C: One only on 2010 European registers, in France.][
;2001: As identified by Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1987/88.][ (probably mis-identified)
;2001M: A motor-glider version of the 2001 powered by a Volkswagen JPX conversion.][
]
Specifications (2001)
See also
References
{{reflist, refs=
[{{cite book , title=Sailplanes 1965–2000, last=Simons , first=Martin , edition=2nd revised , year=2005, publisher= EQIP Werbung & Verlag GmbH, location=Königswinter , isbn=3-9808838-1-7, pages=37, 39]
[{{cite book, title= Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1987–1988, last= Taylor, first= John W. R., year= 1987, publisher= Jane's Information Group, location= London, isbn= 0710608500, page]
744
url-access= registration, url= https://archive.org/details/janesallworldsai0000unse/page/744
[{{cite book , title=European registers handbook 2010 , last= Partington , first=Dave , year=2010, publisher= Air Britain (Historians) Ltd, isbn=978-0-85130-425-0]
[{{cite web , url=http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?catid=60&pagetype=65&appid=1&mode=summary&aircrafttype=Centrair%20201, title=Mariannes on CAA register , access-date=8 September 2012]
1980s French sailplanes
Aircraft first flown in 1985
T-tail aircraft