Obitury By : Tor Johannessen and Pier Morelli

On September 23rd, 1998 Oran Wesley Nicks, met with a tragic fatal accident. Tor Johannessen and Piero Morelli, remember the man that he was.

Dear friends,

Another sad message has reached me through the Internet: Oran Nicks was killed in an off-field landing in his PW-5.

Oran's contributions to world gliding have been of extreme value, and I would like to single out his role in the development of the World Class in particular. As a highly placed and trusted man in NASA and respected university professor Oran took enthusiastically part in all phases of the development of the World Class, from the definition of the class, the design competiton and all the way through the long and complex selection process, even the test flying in Oerlinghausen. One of my special memories from this event is Oran happily flying in the PW-5 whereas I was in the same thermal with one of the other designs.

Oran's status and background gave prestige and distinction to whatever he undertook. As a long time member of OSTIV's Sailplane Development Panel and a member of the World Class Steering Committee from the start, he was able to convince many doubters about the project, which was deemed by many to failure from the outset. That the World Class is now a healthy project is due not the least to Oran, and it is doubly sad that he should be killed in the little glider that he loved so much.

Our thoughts on this sad day go to Phyllis, who through so many years have been by Oran's side as his trusted helper.

We thank Oran for his contributions to the cause of gliding, and for all the good memories!

Oran Nicks is no more with us. On September 23rd, 1998, a tragic accident in an outlanding flying a glider PW-5 that he had built himself deprived sporting aviation and the international soaring community of an exceptional man.

As an aeronautical engineer he was active in the US industry for twelve years, at North American Aviation first, then at Chance Vought where he led the design group of the Scout launcher, well known for the over one hundred space missions for NASA and the US Department of Defense.

The period 1960-1970 followed at the NASA headquarters in Washington where he was responsible for lunar and planetary programs leading to thirty missions of the Ranger, Surveyor, Lunar Orbiter and Mariner on the moon, Mars and Venus.

From 1970 to 1980 he was deputy director of NASA Langley, the famous research center responsible at that time for the program Viking Mars and many other aerospace activities.

Beside the activities as a manager with very high responsibilities Oran Nicks was constantly personally engaged in his own research work in aerodynamics, composite materials, thermoresistant materials (re-entry from space) and more.

A keen interest he had for low speed aerodynamics related to sailplanes and soaring flight in particular, associated with his enthousiasm for the related sporting activity.

Over a hundred publications witness this multiform activity. Among these, one of particular relevance is his book Far Travellers, The Exploring Machines, edited by NASA.

Retired from NASA in 1980 he was called by Texas A & M University where he led a Center of Space Research and a subsonic wind tunnel facility.

Within FAI and OSTIV his highly meritorious international activity is associated with the World Class initiative and the Sailplane Development Panel, respectively. This is where my personal acquaintance and long standing cooperation with Oran was established.

How to forget the initial steps when the Technical Specification for the Worls Class Glider and the Rules for the Design and Prototype Competition were laid down? And our joy and satisfaction when (February 1990) declarations of interest from 83 potential manufacturers from the five continents were received by FAI.

A specific Jury chaired by Oran selected 42 designs out of the 83 proposals as worth being admitted. When the more detailed preliminary designs were available, 12 were considered as fully complying with the rules and therefore admissible to the second phase of the competition, the construction of the prototypes.

It was Oran who submitted these results to the IGC meeting in Queenstown, New Zealand, March 1991, for approval.

When 7 of the 12 selected prototypes, completed in time, were convened at Oerlinghausen, Germany, for the flight demonstration (September 1992), Oran was there as a member of the Jury. He flew all prototypes and contributed in a decisive way to the final selection of the Polish PW-5 as the World Class glider, a selection approved by IGC at the Capetown meeting, March 1993.

After the type certification (March 1994) the problem of producing the glider and making it available worldwide became the main objective. We both together and Oran’s wife Phyllis drove to Poland to visit the Design Team at the Warsaw University of Technology and the PZL Swidnik factory (July 1995). With both our contacts were maintained with continuity in order to ensure that improvements were introduced in the production gliders and an adequate number of them were made available to the market.

We tried hard to create conditions for other manufacturers to come up. Oran in particular insisted on making the glider suitable for construction from kits, an objective that he finally pursued building an ad-.hoc modified PW-5, completed in July 1998 after two years of hard and clever work, and successfully flown for a number of hours.

Fate decreed that he would die flying this glider, his glider.

We were again together in the Jury of the 1st World Championship of the World Class, Inönü, Turkey, September 1997, and shared the great satisfaction of seeing 43 World Class gliders from 23 countries (some never seen at World Championships before) competing for the first time in equal terms at world level.

In the same period of development of the World Class a parallel activity in the OSTIV Sailplane Development Panel gave me a further chance to cooperate with Oran. His interest for the problems of flight safety was genuine. His contributions to the airworthiness and crashworthiness of gliders are noteworthy. He raised the interest of the Panel on the Sailplane Parachute Rescue Systems leading a working group on the specific subject whose work culminated in the issue of the OSTIV Standards for Sailplane Parachute Rescue Systems, a valuable contribution to the development of such systems.

Loved by his Family and his friends, highly respected and admired by the gliding community worldwide, I’ll never forget my great friend to whom we owe so much.