Pilot September 2017

58 | Pilot September 2017 http://www.pilotweb.aero

thirty-second limit and, frankly, I don’t

think you’re going to get much done in

thirty seconds in a Venture. The max

continuous is 2,950, but even then the oil

temperature needs watching, especially in

a climb, as the engine isn’t fitted with an

oil cooler (which would have been a good

idea). There is a sort of jacket around the

inlet manifold that warms the manifold

and possibly cools the oil slightly, but it’s

no oil cooler. The fuel is contained in a

single 32-litre fuselage tank just aft of the

cockpit. Fuel quantity is displayed by a

simple ball-and-tube arrangement, which

is (not very usefully) behind you.

Although typically referred to as a

monowheel, strictly speaking this could

be construed as a misnomer as the

undercarriage has four wheels−a large,

single main wheel, a steerable pneumatic

tailwheel and two small solid wheels on

The Slingsby T61F Venture T2 (there’s a
mouthful) is a version of the T61 that was
ordered by the MoD for the Air Training
Corps, and the T61 itself was derived
from the Scheibe Falke SF 25 (see ‘Originally
a German Falcon’, p 62 ). They say that
beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but of
all the sobriquets that can be applied to the
Venture ‘pretty’ isn’t one of them.
A cantilever low wing monoplane with
slightly forward swept wings, the fuselage
is a fabric-covered, welded steel tube
structure with the forward section skinned
with laminated glassfibre. Slingsby was
just starting to learn about composites in
the 1970s and, unlike the wood spar fitted
to SF 25s and T61s, the Venture has a
glassfibre main spar, encased in plywood.
This modification produced a decrease in
the empty weight and an increase in the
MAUW, greatly increasing its utility. The

wings, tailplane and rudder are skinned

with plywood and fabric, and all control

surfaces (except for the metal top-surface

lift-spoilers) are also fabric-covered.

Flight Test | Slingsby T61F

Just like its original manufacturer’s gliders, the T61 is
designed to be readily dismantled for transport

Awkward cockpit access demands that you climb in

one at a time or risk a painful clash of heads

The fuel filler cap is about the raciest feature of the
otherwise very slow moving Venture

Jet jockeys might call them airbrakes — glider pilots
will recognise them as lift ‘spoilers’

Of all the

sobriquets than can

be applied... pretty

is not one of them

The engine is a VW-derived Rollason RS2

air-cooled flat-four, which spins a two-

blade, fixed-pitch Hoffmann prop. An

interesting fact is that, as it was never

certified as an aero-engine, the only

production aircraft it can be used in is the

T61. It is claimed to produce 45hp at

3,300rpm but with a five-minute limit.

Maximum rpm is 3,500rpm but this has a