page_title: Richard Schreder
section_title: Successful designs
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Schreder / Successful designs
caption_attribution_description: English: (right to left) HP-8, HP-10, HP-11 at 1963 US Soaring Championships at Harris Hill, Elmira, NY.
context_page_description: Richard E. Schreder was an American naval aviator and sailplane developer, responsible for design and development of the HP/RS-series kit sailplanes marketed from 1962 until about 1982. Schreder also founded and ran Airmate, a successful drafting supplies company.
context_section_description: After the HP-9, Schreder went on to develop the HP-10, his first attempt at developing a glider specifically for kit manufacture and construction by sailplane homebuilders. This project was handed off to Heliosoar, a company founded by Stephen DuPont to manufacture sailplane kits.
  Schreder immediately started on the HP-11, completing the prototype in time to fly it to a third-place finish in the 1963 World Gliding Championships in Junín, Argentina. Upon returning to the States, Schreder refined the design slightly, added retractable landing gear, and offered it in kit form as the HP-11A. 
  Over the next few years, Schreder leapfrogged through the HP-series by successively developing new wings and then new fuselages for his glider designs. During this time Schreder also formalized his glider kit business, incorporating under the name Bryan Aircraft, Inc.
  In 1966 Schreder flew his new HP-14 to victory in the US National Championships in Reno, Nevada, and created strong demand for HP-14 kits.  This was his third national championship, having also won in 1958 and 1960.
  Schreder's next design, the HP-15, was somewhat disappointing. Its high-aspect-ratio wing gave it good glider performance at high speed, but yielded too high a sink rate while at thermalling speed.
  Building new wings for the HP-15 fuselage produced the HP-16. These new 15-meter wings were Schreder's first large foray into an innovative construction method featuring closely spaced PVC foam ribs (usually on 4" centers) bonded to an aluminum wing spar, to which was bonded a thin aluminum skin. The closely spaced ribs, combined with similarly-spaced foam interstitials, resulted in a cellular structure that yields great strength and stiffness with low weight. The HP-16 wing spars were made in inboard and outboard sections, each 12 feet (3.66 m) long, and each machined to an I-beam cross-section from billets of solid 7075-T6 aluminum and then spliced together to yield a 7.5m wing panel spar. The machining of these aluminum I beams would have been cost-prohibitive under normal circumstances, but was accomplished as something of a personal challenge by Schreder's friend John Mazur at his shop in Long Island, New York.
  Following the HP-16, Schreder set to work on the RS-15, which combined the HP-16 wings and a new pod-and-boom fuselage. This ship was the only Schreder sailplane design to be named outside the HP nomenclature. The RS stood for Richard Schreder, and the 15 for its fifteen meters of span.
  With his following design, the HP-17, Schreder developed a new, more cost-effective method for making wing spars. These spars featured a rectangular box section consisting of machined C-channels for the upper and lower caps, joined by shear web panels riveted to the flanges of the spar cap channels. These channels were again manufactured by Mazur, and were carefully made so that the floor of the channel tapers in thickness from 3/8" at the root to 1/16" at the tip.
  It is not known whether the HP-17 actually flew, but the wing spars that Schreder developed for it found good use on Schreder's next and most popular kit sailplane, the HP-18.
  First flown in 1974, the HP-18 was available in kit form in 1975, and in 1976 was featured in a series of six articles in Soaring Magazine that described every detail of its construction. In the spirit of the Popular Mechanics article from which Schreder built his first glider at age 9, the Soaring articles reproduced the HP-18 plans and assembly instructions in sufficient detail for a resourcful and mechanically-inclined individual to build the aircraft almost from scratch. However, most builders found it easier to purchase the HP-18 kit and its full-size plans from Bryan Aircraft.
  Through the 1970s, homebuilt sailplanes including Schreder's kits fell somewhat into decline with the rise in performance and popularity of imported European composite sailplanes. Although the HP-18 was his most popular offering, it was also the last of Schreder's kit sailplanes. After the HP-18, Schreder tried his hand at manufacturing carbon-fiber composite w
caption: Right to left: HP-8, HP-10, HP-11. 1963 Harris Hill, NY. (Ben Greene, black shirt, left.)
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