Kondor D.2
The first prototype

There are enough of started projects in my man cave, but there is a special reason to add the next one.

Today, on the July 20, but in the year 1912 the aircraft company "Kondor Flugzeugwerke GmbH" was founded in Essen (t least according to my Windsock article, Wikipedia says June 15th; another date I found was December 15th). Esssen is one of the bigger cities in the german "Ruhrgebiet" (Ruhr Metropolis, Ruhr is a river).
My wife was born there, and my mother in law lives there.
So you guess what? I have to build a Kondor aircraft!

After the experience with my last project Quadruplane I know that I'm able to handle a resin kit by SPIN models. And SPIN offers also some Kondor aircrafts, I decided to try a nice little biplane: Kondor D.2

There was a D.1 biplane, with Nieuport style struts and a single spar lower wing.
This was not very successful so the D.2 project was started. The upper wing was the same as D.1, but now 2 spars in the new lower wing and conventional struts. Two prototypes was build, the first with a 80hp (some sources says Oberursel U.0) in a round cowling and a second one with a 110hp Oberursel UR.II in in horseshoe type cowling. Both take part on the fighter competition, but not ordered into production.

The designer was Walter Rethel, who was later involved in Arado aircrafts and the Bf 109. For the German readers: His granddaughter is an actress and was married to Johannes Heesters.

There are no Datafile for those rare birds but Windsock International Vol 13 No.2 has an nice article, photos and drawings about the Kondor aircraft types. A picture here shows clearly, that the engine was a Le Rhone 80hp. The U.0 looks different.