Fabre Hydravion
| Fabre Hydravion | |
|---|---|
| Type: | Seaplane |
| Design country: | |
| Manufacturer: | |
| First flight: |
March 28, 1910 |
| Number of pieces: |
1 |
The Fabre Hydravion , built by Henri Fabre , was the first successful seaplane in aviation history.
history
Henri Fabre was born in Marseille in 1882 as the son of a successful shipowner . Even as a teenager, he dreamed of building an airplane that could take off and land on water. His father promised him 100,000 gold francs to build such an aircraft when he graduated from engineering. At the Ecole Superieure d'Electricité he met such well-known aviation pioneers as Breguet , Blériot , Farman , Latham and Voisin, but with the exception of Gabriel Voisin no one was seriously interested in the student's ideas.
In 1906 Fabre returned home and devoted himself to building the long-planned Hydravion . He first constructed long, slender floats made of ash wood joined with copper rivets. He carried out the water tests on the Étang de Berre , a bay in Provence with the ship l'Essor borrowed from his father . The l'Essor had a 147 kW (200 hp) machine and reached nine knots. To simulate the start-up process, Fabre designed a 10 HP electric winch and installed it on the stern of the ship. For the towing tests he used simple piano wire 300 m long and 1.6 mm thick. This enabled him to test the swimmers' behavior in the water up to a speed of 25 knots. Indirectly, he also got information about the size of the hydrodynamic resistance of the swimmers from the speed at which the wire was wound. As a result of the experiments, he shortened the swimmers and provided them with a larger angle of attack compared to the water surface.
Since the available engines were too weak to lift the machine, Fabre constructed his own engine, which consisted of three coupled three-cylinder Anzani machines , each with an output of 9 kW (12 hp) . The intended towing propeller should be driven via a belt . However, the engine mass of 150 kg did not allow it to be installed in the aircraft nose, so that it had to be attached more or less above the aircraft and above the wing. Fabre himself had to sit behind the engine.
It is worth noting the unique propeller design that Fabre wanted to use. He constructed a light “double-decker” propeller, with two blades in a row and connected by narrow webs. He tested this construction with a self-made test bench on a truck. For the first flight attempts, however, he used a conventional wooden propeller with a diameter of 3 m.
Since Fabre himself had no flight experience, he used the machine without a propeller for his first attempts and towed it with his tried and tested ship on a 400 m long rope that ran over a pylon system and a buoy anchored in the lake. The aircraft reached 36 knots; lifting could not be achieved, however. He then installed the propeller, which was driven via a long shaft by the coupled 26 kW (36 hp) engine.
In July 1909 he made the first attempts at flight, with the l'Essor transporting the machine to the middle of the lake and launching it there. However, a flight did not succeed. Fabre saw the main reason in the weak engine; therefore he drew hope again when he heard about a new engine designed by Laurent Seguin that was supposed to produce 37 kW (50 hp). He then designed a new aircraft in canard design, which made it possible to relocate the engine to the extreme end of the fuselage.
First flight
After a first attempt at taxiing on the Étang de Berre, in which engine vibrations could still be eliminated, the first flight succeeded on the morning of March 28, 1910 in the port of La Mède near Marseille , and with it Henri's first flight Fabre himself. He covered a distance of 500 m at a height of 2 m. In an interview in 1980 Fabre described his feelings at the time. In the afternoon of the same day, two more flights were carried out in front of witnesses.
Unfortunately, some time later the Hydravion was lost in an audience demonstration when it hit a rock on landing.
construction
The open hull essentially consisted of two beams arranged one above the other. The design of the canard wings corresponded to the one he used for the wings of the first machine - an open lattice spar on the wing nose, behind which fabric was stretched on ribs, similar to today's hang-gliders. The wings were braced against the fuselage. The canard wings were biplane, while the main wing was just simple. The machine had three floats, one at the front and two at the rear. The Gnôme rotary engine with a pusher propeller was installed at the far end; not least because of the fact that it can be started while the aircraft was already standing with the front end in the water on the slipway .
Effects
Shortly afterwards, the Voisin brothers also built their own seaplane, the Voisin Hydro Canard 1 . The basis for this was the existing Voisin Canard model, which they equipped with floats purchased from Fabre. In October 1910, the Canard Voisin was the first seaplane to fly over the Seine .
Technical specifications
| Parameter | Data |
|---|---|
| crew | 1 |
| length | 8.50 m |
| span | 14 m |
| height | 3.66 m |
| Wing area | 17 m² |
| Takeoff mass | 475 kg |
| Top speed | 89 km / h |
| Engines | 1 × 7-cylinder star rotary engine Gnôme Omega with 37 kW (50 PS) |
See also
literature
- Ann Welch: Henri Fabre's Hydravion ; Airplane Monthly, December 1980.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Airplane Monthly, December 1980, p. 665: Photo of the propeller on the truck test stand.
- ↑ Airplane Monthly, December 1980, p. 665: photos of the first version.
- ↑ Enzo Angelucci, Paolo Matrcardi, Edouard Schartz: Airplanes, From the Beginnings to the First World War , Wiesbaden 1976 Falken-Verlag, ISBN 3 8068 0391 9 , p. 76
- ↑ Airplane Monthly, December 1980, p. 667: Interview with Henri Fabre.
- ↑ Technical data