L.Opdyke French Aeroplanes Before the Great War (Schiffer)
Deleted by request of (c)Schiffer Publishing
Gaudard
Louis Gaudard was an electrical engineer who began his aeronautical career as an instructor with Ferdinand Ferber at the flying school of the Ligue Nationale Aerienne, flying a Voisin; Igor Sikorsky was one of their students. In 1909 he worked with Jean Legrand to work on Legrand's modified Voisin; it was tail-heavy and crashed in 1910.
In 1911 he rebuilt it as an observation pusher; Legrand may have helped with the redesign and with the subsequent monoplane. Its unequal-span wings had large cutouts for the pusher propeller; mounted below the lower wing was an enclosed nacelle with rectangular windows. A Bleriot-style undercarriage supported the front end, and the rear ends of the lower outriggers supported the tail, featuring a single large rectangular tailplane.
Some months later at Alaise, in eastern France, Gaudard built a "rigid trussed-beam monoplane." The tail, and the high wing fitted with big rectangular trailing ailerons, resembled those of the biplane. The pilot sat in a light structure set below the wing, slightly ahead of and below the passenger, who could rest his head on the leading edge. A 50 hp Gnome was mounted aft of the pusher propeller; the aircraft sat on 2 wide-set pairs of wheels. It was flying at Juvisy in October 1911; shortly afterwards Gaudard went to work for Jean Legrand, whom he eventually left for Louis Schreck to design the d'Artois pusher biplanes.
(Span: 9 m; length: 8 m; wing area: 18 sqm; gross weight: c 300 kg; speed: c 95 kmh; 50 hp Gnome)