The Neiva BN-1 was a high performance single seat sailplane designed in Brazil in the 1950s. It had national record and competition success and went into production for club use.

Design and development

The BN-1 was a conventionally laid out wooden single seat glider, with a high mounted

cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a canti ...

wing . This had an aspect ratio of 19 and was built around a single I-section spar with 2° of dihedral. The leading edge and upper surface was formed from

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 ...

, the underside fabric covered. The ailerons were wooden framed with fabric covering; the

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 were wooden. The fuselage was a wooden monocoque with the cockpit and its moulded Plexiglas canopy just ahead of the leading edge. Behind the wing the fuselage was quite slender, carrying the cantilever tailplane just above it on a slight step. The vertical tail had a largely straight, slightly raked leading edge, with a small fuselage

fillet Fillet may refer to: *Annulet (architecture), part of a column capital, also called a fillet *Fillet (aircraft), a fairing smoothing the airflow at a joint between two components *Fillet (clothing), a headband *Fillet (cut), a piece of meat *Fille ...

and a rounded tip turning into a broad, curved edged

rudder A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally aircraft, air or watercraft, water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to ...

. The tail surfaces were all wood framed and fabric covered. The BN-1 landed on a forward skid and a retractable monowheel just aft of the centre of gravity

Operational history

The BN-1 went into production for the Brazilian government-run National gliding clubs. It was placed first at the second National Soaring competition. At the third National Soaring competition, four BN-1s took first, second, third and fifth places against twelve European and US aircraft. The BN-1 also set three Brazilian records, including a goal flight.

Specifications (BN-1)

References

{{Indústria Aeronáutica Neiva BN-1 1950s Brazilian sailplanes Glider aircraft High-wing aircraft