Piquerez

   Charles de Piquerez was an explorer who asked de Pischoff and Koechlin in December 1908 to build him a large biplane which he claimed to be his own design, though it included construction details which had appeared earlier in their work. It appeared, unsuccessfully, at Issy-les-Moulineaux in April and May 1909. The long thin streamlined box fuselage was fully covered, and carried biplane tail cells at each end; the equal-span rectangular wings were set nearly amidships, near the engine, which drove 2 pusher propellers on outriggers at each side of the rear fuselage. Small wingtip panels could be warped upward, perhaps to serve as ailerons or rudders. The aft tail cell had side-curtains, but seemingly no moving vertical surfaces. The machine sat on pairs of castering wheels both fore and aft: the pilot was above the front pair, and the passenger was well behind him, between the wings.
   For all its size, the Piquerez was an oddly graceful looking machine; it was driven to Chartres for testing in June 1909, where it crashed on its first flight in July. A 50 hp Dutheil et Chalmers replaced the 40 hp one, and as a monoplane it hopped briefly on 27 August and crashed again. The single wing was braced with twin masts, the 2 biplane tail cells were replaced with single horizontal surfaces, and the aft pair of wheels became a single wheel.

   (Span: 10.8 m (some sources say 14); length: 10.6 m; total area: 78-80 sqm; gross weight: 600 kg; 40 hp Dutheil-et-Chalmers)