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Страна: Великобритания

Год: 1909

Варианты

A.Jackson Avro Aircraft since 1908 (Putnam)

Roe I Triplane

  After his eviction from Brooklands, A. V. Roe turned his attention to a triplane design. In January 1909 he filed a patent for a novel control system applied to a tandem triplane arrangement. The main wings provided control in the pitching plane by varying incidence, operated by fore and aft movements of the pilot’s control lever. Side to side movement of the same lever warped the centre wing, and the upper and lower wings were warped in unison by the rear wing struts acting as push rods. The rear triplane unit acted simply as a fixed lifting surface; a rudder behind this was operated in consort with the wing warping.
  Early in 1909, Roe began work on two triplanes for which engine manufacturer J. A. Prestwich agreed to supply two of his J.A.P. engines. The larger machine, intended to have a 35 hp engine, was apparently built with financial support from motor dealer George Friswell, but before it was completed the partnership was dissolved. The incomplete airframe was subsequently auctioned at Friswell’s Sales Rooms in Albany Street, London, where it realised £5 10s (£4 19s after commission).
  For his own use, Roe designed a machine to use a four-cylinder inline engine of 10 hp. Unfortunately this engine failed on test in the J.A.P. factory, so Prestwich agreed to build a two-cylinder engine of similar power. Until this was ready, Roe had to install the 6 hp engine from his Brooklands biplane.
  The new triplane closely resembled the patent drawings. The two sets of wings were joined by a fuselage of triangular section, with three deal longerons joined by cross struts and wire braced. The main undercarriage consisted of two cycle wheels in reversed forks, with a smaller cycle wheel under the rear fuselage ahead of the tail unit. The wings were each made in three panels, with internal wooden structure of spars and ribs. For lightness and cheapness, the surfaces were covered with wrapping paper with open weave fabric backing. A coat of yellowish varnish earned the machine the ironic name of Yellow Peril later in its career.
  The components of both triplanes were made at Putney early in 1909 while Roe sought a flying ground. After a protracted search, he found the open space of Walthamstow Marshes alongside the River Lea in Essex, where he was able to rent an arch under the Great Eastern Railway’s bridge across the river. Erection of the two triplanes under the archway probably began in March, and after the larger unfinished machine had been removed, taxying trials with the 6 hp engine began in April. By this time, Roe’s younger brother Humphrey had agreed to provide financial support. He owned a factory in Manchester whose best-known product was gentlemen’s trouser braces sold under the trade-mark ‘Bulls Eye’; in recognition of this sponsorship, A. V. Roe added the name ‘Bulls Eye’ to the side of the triplane, which already carried his own trade name ‘Avroplane’.
  The new J.A.P. engine arrived about the end of May. It was a V-Twin with the same 50 degree angle as the 6 hp engine but had mechanically operated overhead valves and, from mid-June, a Simms magneto replacing the battery and coil ignition. Although it only provided 9 hp instead of the promised 10 hp, this was sufficient to enable Roe to get airborne for brief hops from June 5, making (in his own words) ‘dozens of short flights up to 50 ft in length at a height of 2-3 ft, which were hardly more than jumps.’
  The propeller was mounted on a drive-shaft above the engine, with belt-drive from a pulley on the engine to a larger pulley on the propeller shaft. Varying pulley size allowed different gear ratios, and the pitch of the propeller blades could be adjusted on the ground between flights. After a series of trials in which Roe investigated the effect of these variations, and also refined his piloting technique, on Friday July 23 he made three flights of about 900 ft at an average height of 10 ft, thus becoming the first to fly an all British aeroplane with a British engine over British soil.
  Further flights were made during the next two months, interspersed with mishaps leading to repairs and modifications. Skids were fitted under the wing tips, and later removed; the pilot’s seat was moved forward, and then the engine was moved forward, so that the drive wheel on the propeller shaft was ahead of the centre wing spar. Finally, the belt-drive was replaced by a motor cycle chain between pinions on the engine and propeller shafts.
  In this form, and with the vertical fin surfaces in the tail unit removed, the first triplane appeared at the Blackpool meeting of October 18-24. It made a few short hops of up to 150 ft on October 19 but according to contemporary reports it was suffering from engine trouble; Roe himself later suggested that the main trouble was heavy rain soaking the paper covering.
  Roe took two machines to Blackpool; the second aircraft was similar to the original, but was designed to have a new four-cylinder engine which was intended to produce 20 hp but which seems to have only produced about 14 hp. This new engine arrived in Blackpool at mid-week and Roe had the second aircraft ready to fly by October 21, but storms prevented any further flying.
  Blackpool Week 1909 ended the active career of the first Roe I triplane. It made a brief reappearance at an aero exhibition held at Belle Vue Gardens, Manchester, January 1-3, 1914, spent 11 years in storage at the Manchester factory, and was presented in 1925 to the Science Museum at South Kensington, London where it remains on permanent exhibition.
  The airframe of the second Roe I triplane closely resembled that of the first but fortunately there were several prominent recognition features which made it easily distinguishable from its forebear. Whereas the earlier aircraft had a fuselage of constant depth and large tail wheel, the second fuselage was tapered towards the rear and equipped with a long tail skid. There were also additional struts in the undercarriage. The first machine had a small fuel tank mounted on a fuselage longeron but the second had a narrow, cigar-shaped tank on struts ahead of the pilot to give a greater head of fuel. It must also be remembered that only the first triplane bore the fuselage inscription ‘Bulls Eye Avroplane’ under which appeared a clearly painted figure 3, indicating that the inventor regarded it as his third individual aeroplane. He had meanwhile been evicted from Lea Marshes and on his return from Blackpool, transferred to Old Deer Park, Richmond, Surrey. The new site proved unsuitable and late in November 1909 he moved to Wembley Park, Middlesex, where on December 6 the second Roe I triplane made its first exploratory flights with encouragingly few mishaps. The bigger engine improved the performance to the point where local authorities sportingly felled a number of trees to enable him to fly a circular course and land back at his starting point. Attempts to improve the control system were not always successful as on Christmas Eve 1909 when Roe found it impossible to lift the port wings quickly enough and sideslipped into the ground, once more demolishing the port mainplanes.
  In January 1910, with financial help from his brother H. V. Roe, the private firm of A. V. Roe and Company was formed with workshop space in the factory of Everard and Company at Brownsfield Mills, Manchester. Wembley Park flying ground was retained until Maj Lindsay Lloyd converted the centre of Brooklands track into an aerodrome. ‘A.V.’ then returned to the scene of his 1908 experiments and made three half-mile introductory flights there on March 11, 1910. He then left for London to look after his new Roe II triplane, the first example of which, named Mercury, was that day introduced to the public at the Olympia Aero Show. No doubt influenced by the success of contemporary biplanes, he later tried out this configuration using the second Roe I triplane as a guinea pig. All three outer wing panels were removed and the top two replaced by others similar to, but longer than, those of the Roe II Mercury. At the same time a Mercury-type bottom centre section and improved undercarriage were fitted. The tail wheel from the original Roe I triplane was borrowed and fitted into a strengthened mounting, a piece of cannibalism which explains its absence from the Science Museum exhibit to this day. When flown in this guise at Brooklands on Easter Monday 1910, the aircraft was nicknamed the ‘Two-and-a-Bit Plane’ but the advent of newer designs speedily ended its career and the old aircraft was dismantled at Brooklands at the end of the following month.


SPECIFICATION AND DATA
   Construction: By A. V. Roe at 47 West Hill, Putney, London, S.W.15; erected at Lea Marshes, Essex (1st machine) and Blackpool, Lanes. (2nd machine)
   Power Plants:
   One 10 h.p. J.A.P.
   One 20 h.p. J.A.P.
   Dimensions:
   Span 20 ft. 0 in. Length 23 ft. 0 in.
   Wing Area 285 sq. ft.
   Tailplane span 10 ft. 0 in.
   Tailplane area 35 sq. ft.
   Weights: Tare weight 300 lb. All-up weight 450 lb.
   Performance: Speed 25 m.p.h. Range 500 yards
   Production:
   No. 1 Fitted with 2 cylinder 10 h.p. J.A.P., small fuel tank and tail wheel; preserved without engine or tail wheel at the Science Museum, South Kensington, London
   No. 2 Fitted with 4 cylinder 20 h.p. J.A.P., raised cylindrical fuel tank and tail skid; wings and undercarriage modified 4.10; dismantled at Brooklands 5.10


Roe II Triplane

  First product of the newly formed A. V. Roe and Company was a single seat triplane known as the Roe II. This was approximately equal in size to the original machine but was fitted with a 35 hp Green four-cylinder, water-cooled engine driving a birch two-bladed, adjustable-pitch airscrew. Cooling was by means of two spiral tube radiators built into, and fitting flush with, the sides of the front fuselage. The new triplane was structurally superior to its predecessors, with silver spruce struts and spars, and an ash fuselage covered with Pegamoid fabric. The undercarriage was a rigid triangulated structure to which the two-wheeled axle was secured by rubber shock absorber cord. Climbing and diving control was improved by pivoting the entire triplane tail and linking it to the mainplane variable incidence gear, the range of movement being from four to eleven degrees of incidence.
  Named Mercury with due ceremony by the Lord Mayor’s daughter, the first Roe II triplane occupied the place of honour at the Manchester Aero Club’s model aircraft exhibition at White City, Manchester, on March 4, 1910, and although it had not yet flown, was priced at £550 (with tuition). A week later it was again exhibited at the London Olympia Aero Show of March 11-19, where the Prince and Princess of Wales were shown round the machine by A. V. Roe and an order was received from W. G. Windham, later Sir Walter Windham MP, a manufacturer of motor car bodies at Clapham Junction. References to the sale of yet another Roe II triplane to the Rangie Cycle Company appeared in several publications at the time but there is no evidence that such an aircraft was ever built.
  The exhibition machine Mercury was retained by A. V. Roe for school and experimental use but when flight trials began at Brooklands, it rolled on take-off and twice landed upside down. The second crash (by pupil Job), April 17, 1910, resulted in the destruction of the undercarriage and most of the mainplanes. During reconstruction Roe took the opportunity of correcting the C. G. position by moving forward the pilot’s seat, and abandoned wing warping. The control column was remounted on a universal joint, large unbalanced ailerons were hinged to the trailing edge of the top wing, and a tall rectangular rudder more than twice the area of the original was fitted. Ten days were sufficient to complete this work and Mercury was out again for taxying trials on April 27.
  W. G. Windham’s aircraft was delivered to Brooklands early in May and assembled during Whitsun. First hops were made on May 26 by A. V. Roe who then handed it over to the owner for some preliminary taxying. The amount of flying done on this machine is uncertain but it is known that Windham landed in soft ground at Brooklands on July 12 and turned the triplane over on its back.
  Accidents to Mercury were now much less frequent and on Thursday June 2, Roe made several circuits of Brooklands at a height of 20 ft and executed a number of fairly steep turns. At the end of July it was dismantled and taken to Weybridge station along with its successor, Roe III, for despatch by rail to the Blackpool Flying Meeting of August 1, 1910. Hopes of winning the prize money so necessary for future experiments were dashed when sparks from the engine of the LNWR goods train set fire to their truck while puffing up an incline near Wigan on July 27. Both aircraft were reduced to ashes.


SPECIFICATION AND DATA
   Manufacturers: A. V. Roe and Company, Brownsfield Mills, Great Ancoats Street, Manchester; and Brooklands Aerodrome, Byfleet, Surrey.
   Power Plant: One 35 h.p. Green
   Dimensions:
   Span 26 ft. 0 in. Length 23 ft. 0 in. Height 9 ft. 0 in.
   Wing area 280 sq. ft.
   Weights:
   Weight of engine without flywheel 150 lb.
   All-up weight 550 lb.
   Performance: Maximum speed 40 m.p.h.
   Production:
   No. 1 "Mercury", Avro experimental, burned out near Wigan 27.7.10
   No. 2 For W. G. Windham, Brooklands

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Описание:

  • A.Jackson Avro Aircraft since 1908 (Putnam)
  • M.Goodall, A.Tagg British Aircraft before the Great War (Schiffer)
  • P.Lewis British Aircraft 1809-1914 (Putnam)
  • Журнал Flight