Rotter Karakán

The Rotter Karakán or just the Karakán was a high performance Hungarian single seat sailplane. Two were built and set many national gliding records in the years before World War II.

Design

Like several other glider designers of the early 1930s, Lajos Rotter was impressed by Alexander Lippisch's Wien of 1929 and his high performance, single seat Karakán bears its influence. Like the Wien, the Karakán was a high aspect ratio sailplane with a two-piece high wing with a rectangular plan centre section and long, straight tapered outer panels. Both had thick section wings at the root which became progressively thinner over the outer panels. On both designs, ailerons occupied the whole trailing edge of these outer panels. Structurally, the wings were similar, with two spars of unequal strength; the forward spar beams were part of plywood covered D-boxes around the leading edges and the rear spar was a lighter simple beam. The wings were fabric covered behind the main spar, as were the ailerons. Both designs had, on each side, an airfoil-faired V-form strut from the lower fuselage to the outer ends of the centre section, the forward member of the V, connected to the main spar, was more substantial than the rear.