L.Opdyke French Aeroplanes Before the Great War (Schiffer)
Deleted by request of (c)Schiffer Publishing
Fernandez
Antonio Fernandez was born in Aranjuez, in Spain, in 1876; 33 years later he moved to Nice and set up as a ladies' tailor. An automobile enthusiast, he soon developed an interest in aviation. He designed 3 aeroplanes:
No 1 resembled a Wright, but with short flat planes set between the wings, a 24 hp Antoinette with 2 propellers made of steel tubes and oval aluminum paddles; it was launched by catapult but achieved only a few brief glides over the grass. It had been built at Verany's in Nice, and was tested first on 10 April 1909 on the estate of La Grimaude, at Antibes.
No 2 was a biplane designed around the frame of No 1 with 4 wheels. The Antoinette this time drove a single large pusher propeller through a chain and shaft. The twin rudders differed from the Wright design, and the Wright aft fuselage outriggers were replaced by single spars, one bent up over and the other down around the propeller disc. It flew first on 10 June 1909; it was reported that Delagrange had flown it on straight-line flights at Issy, but a few days afterwards it was entered at the competition at Betheny; on that occasion it was unable to fly twice over the starting line. Its most interesting feature was the handlebar used for control: the handles of it could be pushed together or pulled apart. One of the 10 men who worked on it was Louis Lefebvre. It crashed shortly after the meeting at Reims.
(Span: 8 m; length: 10 m; wing area: 28 sqm; empty weight: c 300 kg. These same figures also appear for the Fernandez No 4.)
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