THE SLOAN BICURVE

摘要

The early days of aviation saw the creation of numerous aircraft of such bizarre appearance that they frequently leave modern observers wondering what their designers could have been thinking. One example was the Sloan Bicurve, a biplane of distinctive appearance, even in its own day. The Bicurve is worth remembering, however, if only because evidence exists that the strange airplane actually flew.Between 1910 and 1912, American expatriate Jacques-Jules Sloan built a series of biplanes he called Bicurves in his small workshop in the Paris suburb of Charenton-le-Pont. The Bicurve's fuselage, tail and landing gear were similar to those found on French Bleriot monoplanes of that period. As initially constructed, the fuselage terminated in a movable rudder, without a fixed fin, and fixed horizontal stabilizers of flat section without any airfoil. The elevators were originally mounted ahead of the fuselage on struts, in canard fashion. Those struts were subsequently removed and the elevators relocated to a more conventional position at the tail, hinged at the trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizers.