BELLAMY biplane (Monsieur Bellamy, Brooklands Track, Weybridge, Surrey)

   Bellamy was a flamboyant Frenchman who had experimented in France and Italy in 1906 and claimed a flight of 500m at Modane in France on the biplane which he showed at a Milan exhibition, where it was suspended below a balloon. He arrived in England in December 1906 with a dismantled 'aeroplane', which he stated had been damaged in transit and established himself at Brooklands on the uncompleted site of the Railway Straight. His original experiments in France and Italy are believed to have made use of the Voisin-Archdeacon glider on floats much modified by Bellamy. The machine was described at the time in the Auto and ten years later in Flight and was quite different from that which Bellamy erected at Brooklands.
   His arrival at Brooklands followed the offer of a prize by the Brooklands Automobile Racing Club of ?2500 for the first aviator to fly a circuit of the track. Preparatory to attempting flight Bellamy carried out experiments with propellers on a catamaran on the lake in Mr. Locke-King's grounds.
   However, at Brooklands, the Bellamy aircraft was constructed on the site, largely from bamboo, and was fitted with a Panhard engine driving a pusher propeller direct on the crankshaft and a tractor propeller on an extension shaft. The machine had a front mounted cruciform fin and horizontal plane, both of triangular shape, and a large flexible tailplane, serving as an elevator control, mounted midway between the top and bottom longerons of the rear structure. The whole machine looked extremely flimsy and unlikely to achieve sustained flight, which in the event it did not.

   Power: 35hp Panhard four-cylinder horizontally opposed water-cooled.
   Data
   Span 48ft
   Span tailplane 12ft
   Length behind wings 30ft