The more you look into Gourdou Leseurre, the more complex it gets - umpteen variants and sub-variants of the basic parasol - mention of one (the GL-21 C1 Chassis #6) with reinforced struts, which sounds like this one.
Anyway, I have nothing on the drawing board, so Robert please continue !
.... and just to prove Mike's point about French aircraft designations, the caption to the photograph I used (the work of a well known French aviation history author) is: 'Gordou-Lesseure GL-22 F-AIDS, à Soissons en 1935'!
This is another aeroplane with a non-PC registration, G-AFOK, the Heston Type 5 Racer. It flew - for all of five minutes. Maybe that's why it was called the Type 5!
Here, pre-war, it has a 40hp Salmson up front. It survived the war and some years later was modified, redesignated, gained a 105hp Hirth and a new registration mark. The latter wasn't cancelled until 2015, so it may be extant somewhere.
Here's what it looked like post-war, with the Hirth replacing the Salmson, or, at least, that's what the books say. To my eye it looks like a completely different, rather than a modified, aeroplane. Maybe that's why it was given a new designation and registration?
No, it's exactly the same, apart from the wing shape, the circular versus slab-side fuselage profile, the tail unit, the struts, the stub wings, the cockpits, and the entire undercarriage.
Otherwise, it's identical....... Are you 'avin' us on, Mike ????
The second aircraft is the Guelton HG.2 from France.
I stumbled about that one during my search but discarded the possibility because of the completely different look.
In the secretprojects-forum there is mention of a Guelton Mouette, so maybe this is the plane we are looking for?
What is really strange to me is that the first photo looked very familiar at first sight but that was probably sort of optical illusion.
Bookmarks