The only mention I can find of this aeroplane is a youtube video which describes it as the plywood and plastic Zodiac trainer built at Bendix Airport, New Jersey, in 1941.
Addendum: described in Aerofiles as the Zodiac Libra-Det of c.1940.
Spot on, Mike . Although, when one considers the designs that preceded and succeeded it, what inspired Roland Payen to build a Taylorcraft Plus C lookalike, in 1949, is beyond me.
When you've finished catering for your golfing aficionado house guests, we'll look forward to your next challenge.
Yes, Mike, it is Robert Fleury's 1948 homebuilt avionette monoplace. So a large for you together with the responsibility for tendering the next aeronautical brain teaser.
Thanks Mike.
Here's something of similar vintage, but with two seats, enclosed in a quaint cockpit resembling something from from an old-fashioned coachbuilder.... Wind-tunnels? Pah !!
When you said, Mike, that this is 'something of a similar vintage', I took that as a reference to Robert Fleury's 1948 RF.10 and thus assumed that this machine dated from the post-WW2 period? I think that, in consequence, I have been on a wild goose chase because, now, I think this machine to be the sole Farman F-355 F-ALME - dating from 1931!
Now what, Mike, did your fellow Scotsman, Sir Walter Scott, say? Oh yes:
'Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!'
Clearly aviafrance deceived me by putting up of photograph of F-ALME and describing it as the sole Farman F-355 (q.v. https://www.aviafrance.com/farman-f-...rance-6447.htm). Thus I did not look further. Had I, instead, consulted the copy of Pascal Brugier's Registre France, which was sitting on my desk, I would have seen that F-ALME initially was a Farman F-231 and subsequently was a F-351. Thus having made an error of omission, I feel that I ought to resile from posting the next challenge and declare open house. However as lacunae rarely seem to benefit this thread, hopefully I will be forgiven for grasping the nettle and taking us away from France with this .....
And finally, what does the Farman F-355 look like? According to someone offering for sale on eBay, at an exhorbitant price, a wooden model of it, it is a high wing monoplane powered by a single Salmson radial engine. But this model carries the registration mark F-AJJB which, according to Pascal Brugier, is a Farman 192! The reality appears to be that the F-351 and the F-355 either were very similar or the same, judging by what appears to be a contemporary captioned photograph (q.v. https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/thr...ts.5969/page-3, post #84 - the source of which, unfortunately, is not given) of the F-355. Unfortunately the machine in that photograph does not have a registration mark evident.
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