Motor Glider Grob 109B

One of the most beautiful flying machine in the world. I am personally very connected to it. There is a story almost 20 years old:

In the year 1985, a huge company based in Sarajevo, Energoinvest, where I have been employed as a Business Aviation Department manager, decided to buy a new jet, Cessna Citation S/II and get rid of nice small Cessna 310Q, YU-BGY . 310 was more than 15 years old and it's value could be around £20,000 (British pounds). Only God knows how I succeeded to persuade my bosses that, instead of selling this plane directly, what would involve a lot additional costs, make a gift to the Aero-club Sarajevo where I was heavily involved for more than 20 years. Donation has been done under one condition: aircraft must be sold and money must be used for buying some motor glider. At this time, there was no even one motor glider registered Yugoslavia.

In Aero-club Sarajevo we believed that with motor glider in fleet, we could achieve much better level of flying education in shorter time with smaller costs. So, we all voluntarily started to work and looking for available motor glider on the European second hand market within our budget. And we found it in Augsburg, 50 km or so NW of Munich in Germany. The aircraft was in fantastic condition, well maintained and taken care of, excellent equipped, radio, ILS, transponder and full set of standard instruments.

This is two-seater, side-by-side, 90HP engine, variable pitch propeller, 117 kts cruising speed, 8 hours endurance with engine running and so on. As a glider, it has the best glide angle 1:28

Price was reasonable.

In Aero-club, I was responsible to find a buyer for 310. So, I took my Minolta X-700 (the very same one I used in Farnborough now), took 20-ish shots and sent them all over Europe.

Bob King, aircraft trader from Elstree, NW London (just a few miles away from my home now), was very interested. Over the phone we agreed a price and on 12th December 1985 Energoinvest's pilots Vladislav Spasic and Ahmet Zujo , our trading representative Emira Zimic and myself, boarded the plane and took off toward UK. Journey took three days, because we had to stay in Munich two days waiting some heavy icing condition over west Europe is cleared. Finally, on 15th December, we landed at Stansted airport.

The following day in the morning we flew from Stansted to Elstree where we met Bob King. After thorough inspection of the plane, Bob King asked me:

"Would you like to sell your Minolta?" !!!

In other words, 310 looked much better on photos than in reality. After some negotiations, we finally shook a hands, he got 310, and I took a cheque and brought it to London representative of one bank from Bosnia, who, you won't believe, was a member of our club!

We left YU-BGY just in front of that hangar . (This photo has been taken in January 1986. BGY is first time registered in UK as G-BMMC . In the year 2006 we can see the very same plane as G-XKLF . Today, Cessna 310Q, S/N 0041 have base in Jersey, Channel Islands under registration N850KF . It is hard to believe that airplane on this photo is 39 years old!)

Money was transferred on 17th December, and the same day we boarded Lufthansa and flew back home.

Less than a week later, my best friend, pilot Vladislav Spasic nickname Spasa and I came in Augsburg to pick up Grob 109. People we have bought aircraft from gave us all manuals and well into the small hours Spasa and me studied them. In the morning they picked us up and we went to the airport. It was extremely windy day with gusty winds, but at least weather was clean all the way to Yugoslavia.

Each of us got five short circles around the airport and that was it. Decision was that I will fly the plane, and Spasa, proffesional pilot, will be responsible for navigation and communication. We passed custom and took off with full tank of fuel. It was simply hard to believe what books say about fuel consumption. Following the logic "better safe than sorry", we decided to make a stop in Salzburg, Austria, just to fill a tank. After one hour flight we landed in Salzburg and paid more for landing tax than for fuel!

This is a picture OF THAT MOTOR GLIDER, taken at our Aero-club's airport couple of months later. You can notice German flag on the tail. As soon as snow has gone, Federal Aviation inspector Mika Isakovic came in Sarajevo and after several flights and checking all paperology, plane was registered as YU-6012, and I was pronounced as the first flight instructor for motor gliders in Yugoslavia. Later that day I "gave a lift" to Mr Isakovic from Sarajevo to Belgrade, and flew back to Sarajevo.

Fuel consumption was unbelievable small: tank was filled last time in Zagreb on the way from Germany. Three months we used to start engine every two weeks for 15 minutes. When I came back to Sarajevo from Belgrade, I had a quarter of tank remained !!!

Regardless how large country is, informations about news in the aviation world are spread from one to the other end of the country with speed of light. Every aero-club in Yugoslavia heard about our motor glider and everybody wanted to know what are our experiences. In Zagreb, capital of Croatia (before the war 1992, Croatia used to be part of Yugoslavia as same as England is part of UK) they used to organize aviation exhibition every year, something like small Farnborough. Organizers of 1986 exhibition have sent us invitation and asked if we can participate to their exhibition and lend them Grob 109B for a few days. Unfortunately, we couldn't do that, but we did something else: one day in the morning I flew to Zagreb, where I made several demonstration flights. Later that day, on the way back to Sarajevo, I had very bad weather conditions. This is very high mountains area and there was no way to get through them. For couple of hours I was trying different passages and canyons, without any success. But, there was not reason for any excitement, I was able to stay in the air hours and hours, thanks to enormous endurance of that aircraft. At the end, just before nightfall, I landed in Banja Luka, about 100 miles from Sarajevo.

For three years Grob served us extremely fine. Unfortunately, my friend Ahmet Zujo crashed it into the pieces during take off on Sarajevo International Airport.

This was my story

Now, we are back to the future, in Farnborough 2004

Those two aircrafts (on the shots) are owned by 618 Volunteer Gliding School. Their web address is http://www.618vgs.org.uk/ and there you can find all technical details after you click on the link GROB VIGILANT T MK 1 below the first picture