Diamond HK36 Super Dimona

The Diamond HK36 Super Dimona is an extensive family of Austrian low-wing, T-tailed, two-seat motor gliders that were designed by Wolf Hoffmann and currently produced by Diamond Aircraft Industries.
Design and development.
The series started with the Hoffmann H36 Dimona, a touring motorglider introduced in the early 1980s. The aircraft were initially produced by Hoffmann Flugzeugbau, which became HOAC Flugzeugwerk and later Diamond Aircraft Industries.
Built entirely from fibreglass, the H36 family all use a Wortmann FX 63-137 airfoil. The wings feature top-surface Schempp-Hirth-style airbrakes. Optionally, the wings can be folded by two people in a few minutes to allow storage. The original H36 has wings, while the later members of the family added slightly greater span. The H36 offers a 27:1 glide ratio, while later variants improved that by one point, to 28:1 by adding winglets increasing the span to . Cockpit accommodation seats two in side-by-side configuration, under a hinged bubble canopy that is pushed up and backwards.
The series are type certified in Europe and North America. The H36 received its US Federal Aviation Administration certification on 9 July 1986. Due to its fibreglass construction, the US certification includes the restriction "All external portions of the glider exposed to sunlight must be painted white except of (sic) wing tips, nose of fuselage and rudder."
In March 1987 an improved variant was developed by Dieter Köhler and the subsequent HK36R first flew with a Limbach L2400 engine in October 1989.
When equipped with the larger available engines, particularly the Rotax 914 turbocharged powerplant, the aircraft can be used for glider towing. A commercial success, more than 900 H36s and HK36s have been completed.
The HK36 provided the basis from which the Diamond DV20 Katana from which the improved DA20 and four-seat DA40 series were later developed.
Operational history.
In 1991, an HK36, flown by Peter Urach in Austria, set an absolute altitude record in its class for a piston engined aircraft of . The record held until surpassed in 2002 by the Bohannon B-1.
The FCD (Fuel Cell Demonstrator) was a project led by Boeing that used a Diamond HK36 Super Dimona motor glider as a testbed for a fuel cell-powered light airplane research project. The project achieved level flight using fuel cells only in February and March 2008.
In December 2016 there were nine H36s and thirty HK36s registered with the US FAA, two HK36Rs and two HK36TTSs registered with Transport Canada, along with seven H36s and eight HK36s registered with the UK Civil Aviation Authority.