J-1 Prząśniczka – a single-seat amateur aircraft, a strutted high-wing monoplane with a simple and light, wooden structure with a fixed landing gear, a pusher engine placed behind the pilot's cabin. The aircraft was designed by amateur designer Jarosław Janowski from Łódź.
J-1 Prząśniczka at the Polish Aviation Museum in Kraków, photo: Wikipedia
Jarosław Janowski's idea was to design an aircraft with a simplified structure, built from easily accessible materials, cheap to build and operate.
He designed the aircraft himself in July 1967, and built it together with Stefan Polawski and Witold Kalita, colleagues from the Łódź Aeroclub. The plane was built in Łódź in a room with an area of 18 m², in an apartment in a building on the second floor. At the beginning of 1969, the construction of the fuselage and wings was completed. On April 15, 1969, the engine for the Saturn-500 plane was started.
Janowski designed the engine based on his own idea, which was built by Stefan Polawski. It was a two-stroke boxer, carbureted engine with a capacity of 500 cm³, built from parts manufactured in the German Democratic Republic from the engine of the MZ 250 motorcycle.
The designer applied for permission to fly the aircraft by submitting documentation and a technical description of the aircraft to the Inspectorate of Civil Aircraft Control, but the office did not make a decision. On July 30, 1970, pilot Jerzy Orłowski made the first flight in an airplane without official permission. After a test flight, the pilot confirmed the good flight characteristics of the aircraft. The test flight was carried out in secret, because bureaucratic reluctance and restrictive regulations in the Polish People's Republic did not allow for the registration of an amateur-built aircraft, and the requirements for performing strength calculations and detailed technical documentation were impossible for an amateur designer to fulfill.
source - Wikipedia
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