The
Roe
Roe, ( ) or hard roe, is the fully ripe internal egg masses in the ovaries, or the released external egg masses, of fish and certain marine animals such as shrimp, scallop, sea urchins and squid. As a seafood, roe is used both as a cooking, c ...
I Biplane (often later referred to as the Avro Biplane) was the first powered aircraft to be designed, built, and flown in England. Designed in an attempt to claim a prize offered by the
Brooklands Automobile Racing Club, it was designed and built by
Alliott Verdon Roe, who based it on a powered model with which he had won a ''
Daily Mail
The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily Middle-market newspaper, middle-market Tabloid journalism, tabloid conservative newspaper founded in 1896 and published in London. , it has the List of newspapers in the United Kingdom by circulation, h ...
'' prize of
£75 at
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is an entertainment and sports venue in North London, situated between Wood Green and Muswell Hill in the London Borough of Haringey. A listed building, Grade II listed building, it is built on the site of Tottenham Wood and th ...
in April 1907. This prize was substantially larger: the club committee was offering £2,500 for the first person to fly a circuit of their three-mile (4.8 km) race track by the end of the year. In addition the ''
Daily Graphic'' was offering a £1,000 prize for a flight of more than a mile (1.6 km).
[Jackson 1990 p.2]
The Roe biplane was built in the coachhouse of Roe's brother in Putney and transported to Brooklands for testing in September 1907.
It was an unequal-span two-bay biplane without any vertical stabilising surface or rudder and was originally powered by a 9 hp (7 kW)
JAP engine
An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy.
Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...
mounted in front of the wing and driving a two-bladed aluminium
pusher propeller mounted behind the wings. This proved insufficiently powerful to get the craft airborne. Roe continued work on his aircraft, borrowing a French
Antoinette engine of 24 hp (18 kW) to use instead. In order to carry the additional weight of this engine, Roe fitted additional lifting surfaces at mid-gap in the inner bay of the wing structure. With this motor, Roe was able to make several short flights in the aircraft; the first on 8 June 1908.
One of the conditions of Roe's occupation of his shed at Brooklands was that it was to be used as a refreshment room on race days and on the first of these the aircraft was damaged when being manhandled over a fence by Brooklands racetrack attendants. Roe repaired the machine and some further short flights were made before he was evicted from Brooklands on 17 July 1907. Roe dismantled the aircraft and returned the engine, since he could not afford to buy it.
[Jackson 190 p.3]
In 1988, a non-flying
replica
A replica is an exact (usually 1:1 in scale) copy or remake of an object, made out of the same raw materials, whether a molecule, a work of art, or a commercial product. The term is also used for copies that closely resemble the original, without ...
was constructed for the 80th anniversary of Roe's first flight and is displayed at the
Brooklands Museum. In 2008, a taxiable replica was constructed for the museum to celebrate the flight's centenary.
Specifications (Antoinette engine)
See also
*
I (Triplane)
*
II Triplane
*
III Triplane
*
IV Triplane
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
Brooklands Avro Biplane Project
{{Avro aircraft
1900s British experimental aircraft
Roe I Biplane
Biplanes
Single-engined pusher aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1908