With the winter fast approaching and all our birds traditionally migrating south to the paved runways of Pleso and the ZTZ Zmaj maintenance facility, I had not expected to find anything new or interesting on today’s visit to Lučko. To be honest I hadn’t expected to find anything full stop – however I struck Achtung, Skyhawk! gold when, quite by accident, I peeked into the AK Zagreb hangar and found me a new and very interesting glider… 🙂
At first I couldn’t figure out what it was, thinking it may have been a homebuilt (it certainly looked like one), but my interest peaked when I saw SZD-12A written on the vertical stab, recognizing it as one of PZL-Bielsko’s early gliders. A Google search back home revealed it to be a very, very rare Mucha 100A, of which only a bit more than a 100 were built. This one was even more interesting as it had been turned into a motorglider, so I naturally got out the camera and went to work :).
You see my dilemma :). When I first saw it, with a stuck-on engine and no wings, I couldn't really make heads nor tails of it 🙂Out back, it all became clear :). A very, very rare wood & fabric glider, this one is apparently new to the Croatian register. The wings, lying to the side, still sport a numerical registration and though I couldn't see which, I presume it's from the Polish glider register (ex. SP-1234)Emerging into the sun with its odd engine and even odder installation. Don't know if it's visible in this shot, but the nose gear is equipped with an external disk brake, much like the one you can find on modern bicyclesThe color is pretty nice, suits it well :). Despite being a glider, which would have meant a G-prefixed registration, the engine installation - neither a factory mod nor certified - meant the aircraft had to be registered in the U-prefixed ultralight register (factory motorgliders are registered in the "normal" category D register)But the most interesting thing about 9A-UJB is the odd little engine, with it's two cylinders - and virtually everything else - on one side. I presume it's a two-stroke as well, but don't know about the power, guesstimating it at maybe 40-50 HPAnother side view :). The installation is pretty basic, but then again it needs to haul little weight. Looks like it might even be an antiquated car engine... maybe from a Trabant 🙂
Achtung, Skyhawk! 
The engine is a 2 cyl 600 cc two stroke from the Trabant car. It has a power output of approx 26 hp at 5500 rpm.