The Monnett Monerai is a sailplane that was developed in the United States in the late 1970s for homebuilding. It is a conventional pod-and-boom design with a V-tail and a mid-mounted cantilever wing of constant chord.
The kit assembles in approximately 600 hours. It has bonded wing skins and incorporates 90° flaps for glide path control. The pod-and-boom fuselage consists of a welded steel tube truss encased in a fiberglass shell, with an aluminum tube for the tailboom. A spar fitting modification was released in 1983.[1]
A powered version was designed as the Monerai P with an engine mounted on a pylon above the wings. A Sachs Rotary Engine was chosen for the prototype.[2] A version with extended wing tips is also available (Monerai Max) which increases the span to 12 m (39 ft) and raises the glide ratio from 28:1 to more than 30:1.[3]
The powered Monerai P and the unpowered Monerai S versions are identical structurally.
