Turning his back on a 15 year stage career, Cody closed the road show and spent months on kite and airship matters. He built gliders in his spare time, but Cody was more interested in aeroplanes and before long had fitted a 12 h.p. Buchet engine to one of his kites.
The motor kite was constructed at Farnborough in 1907, though possibly started in 1906. It was a pilotless biplane, similar to a Cody kite but with additional control surfaces and a three-cylinder 12 hp Buchet engine powering a propeller situated behind the wings. The span of the upper wing is estimated to 35 feet. The undercarriage was fitted beneath the central box section and two long skids were mounted beneath the twin tail rudders. The machine had a horizontal tailplane and at one stage biplane elevators/balancing planes were fitted on the front.
It was tested both on the ground and suspended from a cable rigged between two 100 ft masts, but there is no evidence that it ever made a free flight. Cody said, when presenting slides of the machine to a meeting of the Aeronautical Society, “This is a kite; I am just starting the engine and I try to get out of the way to let it run. It was supposed to be let loose, but the authorities were afraid I might do some damage by letting it go up in the sky.”
All Aero 