Voisin Canard
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| Voisin Canard | |
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| Voisin Canard floatplane being tested on the Seine, 3 August 1911. The front of the aircraft is on the right. | |
| Role | |
| National origin | France |
| Manufacturer | Frères Voisin |
| Designer | Gabriel Voisin |
| First flight | February 1911 |
| Introduction | 1911 |
The Voisin Canard was an aircraft developed by Voisin brothers during 1910 and first flown early in 1911. It was named the Canard because of its duck-like shape. It was originally flown as a landplane: with the addition of floats it became one of the first seaplanes of the French Navy.
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[edit] Design and development
The Canard was, even by the standards of 1910, a curiously regressive design,[1] its layout reminiscent of Alberto Santos-Dumont's 14-bis of 1906.
As first flown at Issy-les-Moulineaux by Maurice Colliex, the aircraft had an uncovered fuselage of wire-braced wood construction with the 50 hp (37 kW) Rossel-Peugeot[2] rotary engine at the rear and the front-mounted control surfaces consisting of an all-moving elevator divided into two halves, one either side of the fuselage, a rectangular balanced rudder mounted above the elevator, and a pair of short-span fixed horizontal surfaces with a high angle of attack mounted behind and below the elevators. Voisins characteristic side-curtains were fitted to the outermost pair of interplane struts and roll control was achived using split trailing-edge ailerons on the outer two bays of both upper and lower wings. [3]
The aircraft was judged a success and Voisin manufactured a number of examples. There are variations between the individual production aircraft. The number of sets of side curtains varies, some aircraft having two or even three sets.
[edit] Seaplane version
One of the planes was bought by the Navy in March 1912 to equip the seaplane tender La Foudre, the first seaplane carrier in history. [4]
[edit] Specifications
Data from Flight magazine 30 December 1911 p.1137[5]
General characteristics
- Crew: 1
- Length: 7.9 m (26 ft)
- Wingspan: 12 m (40 ft)
- Wing area: 43.9 m2 (473 sq ft)
- Gross weight: 549 kg (1,210 lb)
- Powerplant: 1 × Gnome 7-cylinder air-cooled radial, 52 kW (70 hp)
Performance
- Maximum speed: 90 km/h; 49 kn (56 mph)
[edit] See also
- Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era
- Fabre Hydravion, an earlier hydroplane
- Curtiss Model E
[edit] Notes
- ^ Gibbs-Smith C.H. Aviation London NMSI: 2003 p.193
- ^ A New Voisin Machine, Flight magazine 14 January 1911
- ^ The New VoisinFlight magazine 25 Feb 1911 p.167
- ^ Hallion, Richard Taking Flight New York Oxford University Press, 2003 p. 304 ISBN 0 019 516035 5
- ^ The Voisin Canard
[edit] References
- Opdycke, Leonard E French Aeroplanes Before the Great War Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1999 ISBN 0 7643 0752 5
[edit] External links
- Flights of Maurice Colliex on the Canard Voisin
- Les Canards de Gabriel Voisin (HTML), PDF file with images
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