Two brothers named Wilson and Harvey Doyle were 1925 graduates of Harvard and Yale respectively and left their home town of Charlotte, North Carolina, for Detroit, Michigan. After some time spent working for others and trying to obtain financial backing, they moved to Portsmouth, Ohio, where they came in contact with William Burke of the Vulcan Last Company. Burke backed their plan to build a two-place, tandem, open-cockpit parasol sportplane and the Vulcan Aircraft Division began in 1928 design work in a rented second floor room and construction in a former street car barn in Portsmouth.
Designed by Harvey Doyle, Dwight Huntington, and Jan Pavlecka, the result was the Vulcan “American Moth” NX4243 two-seat lightweight sporting aircraft. Burke chose the name in order to take advantage of the popularity of the British de Havilland “Moth.” A publicity tour of Florida ensued in which a parachutist, Benny Martinez, jumped from the Moth carrying a set of Vulcan golf clubs.
Priced at $2,500, it was later re-powered with 90hp LeBlond.
The plane was a hit, but the relationship among the principles was deteriorating and the Doyle brothers left to start their own Doyle Aircraft Company in Baltimore.
Engine: 60 hp Detroit Air-Cat Wingspan: 30’9″ Length: 18’0″ Useful load: 540 lb Max speed: 115 mph Cruise: 96 mph Stall: 43 mph Range: 400 mi Seats: 2
Vulcanair was the owner of the former Partenavia group and at Paris 2003 exhibited its VF600W Mission, a utility design which resembles Cessna’s Caravan. The prototype, I-VAVF, first flew in Januarv 2001 and had accumulated 30hr flying to date. Powered by a single Czech built 777shp Walter M601F 11 turboprop driving a five blad¬ed propeller, the design was aiming for cer¬tification in March 2004. This cargo/passenger aircraft has a fuselage shape which allows palletised cargo.
Engine: 1 x Walter M601 turboprop, 777 shp Payload: 1600 kg or 11 pax Crew: 1
Single seat single engined high wing mono¬plane with two axis control. Wing has swept back leading and trailing edges, and tapering chord; no tail, canard wing. Pitch control by fully flying canard; yaw control by tip rud¬ders; no separate roll control, control inputs through stick for pitch/yaw. Wing braced from above by kingpost and cables, from below by cables; wing profile; double ¬surface. Undercarriage has three wheels in tricycle formation; suspension on nose¬wheel and glass fibre suspension on main wheels. Push right go left nosewheel steering independent from yaw control. Brake on nosewheel. Aluminium tube framework, without pod. Engine mounted below wing driving pusher propeller. These aircraft are Germa¬nisations of the Fledgling designed by Klaus Hill. The Vulcan uses the Fledge in conjunction with a canard. This company, however, has instead of using a one piece canard, the Traveler uses two mobile surfaces articulated separately from the aircraft’s two main horizontal tubes. Acting as elevators, these two surfaces are operated from the stick via a push rod. The frame has been completely redesigned by Vulcan. The wings used are Fledge II or Fledge III, but Vulcan modifies them by adding trapezoidal vertical surfaces acting as winglets, to reduce tip vortices. Travelers are available under the name of Traveller II or Traveller III, depending upon the wing used, deli-vered built but without power pack. This is either a Lloyd 22 hp or the Cuyuna 430R 30hp. Two propellers were on offer, one a fixed pitch two blade and the other a three blade ground adjustable pitch. Only 20 examples had been produced by March 1983 and sold purely in West Germany.
Traveller II Height overall 6.4ft, 1.95m Wing span 32.5ft, 9.90m Chord at root 5.5ft, 1.68m Chord at tip 4.5ft, 1.37 m Nose angle 144 deg Main wing area 163 sq.ft, 15.1 sq.m Wing aspect ratio 6.5/1 Engine: Lloyd LS400, 22 hp at 5500 rpm Propeller diameter 36 inch, 0.91 m Max static thrust 177 lb, 80kg Power per unit area 0.13hp/sq.ft, 1.45hp/sq.m Fuel capacity 5.3 US gal, 4.4 Imp gal, 20.0 litre Empty weight 137 lb, 62 kg Max take off weight 442 lb, 200 kg Payload 305 lb, 138 kg Max wing loading 2.71 lb/sq.ft, 13.2 kg/sq.m Max power loading 20.1 lb/hp, 9.1kg/hp Never exceed speed 56mph, 90kph Max cruising speed 47mph, 75kph Economic cruising speed 35 mph, 56 kph Stalling speed 22 mph, 35 kph Max climb rate at sea level 680 ft/min, 3.5 m/s Best glide ratio with power off 9/1 Take off distance 100ft, 30 m Landing dis¬tance 65 ft, 20 m Range at average cruising speed 124 mile, 200 km
Traveller III Height overall 6.4ft, 1.95m Wing span 32.5ft, 9.90m Nose angle 144 deg Main wing area 157 sq.ft, 14.6 sq.m Wing aspect ratio 6.7/1 Engine: Lloyd LS400, 22 hp at 5500 rpm Propeller diameter 36 inch, 0.91 m Max static thrust 177 lb, 80kg Power per unit area 0.14hp/sq.ft, 1.50hp/sq.m Fuel capacity 5.3 US gal, 4.4 Imp gal, 20.0 litre Empty weight 143 lb, 65 kg Max take off weight 468 lb, 220 kg Payload 342 lb, 155 kg Max wing loading 3.10 lb/sq.ft, 15.1 kg/sq.m Max power loading 22.1 lb/hp, 10.0kg/hp Never exceed speed 56mph, 90kph Max cruising speed 44mph, 70kph Economic cruising speed 32 mph, 52 kph Stalling speed 19 mph, 30 kph Max climb rate at sea level 790 ft/min, 4.0 m/s Best glide ratio with power off 10/1 Take off distance 100ft, 30 m Landing dis¬tance 65 ft, 20 m Range at average cruising speed 124 mile, 200 km
Later Vuia aircraft, al¬though more conventional for their time and (in the case of the No 2 design) fitted with a more reliable engine, did not achieve flights of any great length compared with others of their day.
Designed and built by Romanian pioneer Traian Vuia in 1907, the No.2 was claimed to be a rebuilt Vuia 1.
The compact airframe and folded wings are distinctive features of this design which was powered by a 25 hp Antoinette motor.
One of the first Europeans to make a powered flight (18 March 1906) in his own aeroplane. Traian Vuia is claimed as Romania’s first aviator, although at the time of his early flights he was resident in Paris and his birthplace was then apart of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His first aeroplane, built with the assistance of Frenchman Victor Tatin, travelled no more than 78.75 ft (24 m) on its longest hop-flight, but had several novel features, including a variable incidence wing and an undercarriage with pneumatic tyres.
The endurance of the motor was only three minutes.
Engine: modified Serpollet carbonic acid gas engine, 20 hp Prop: 7 ft 2.5 in (2.20 m) dia two blade Wing span: 22 ft 11.5 in (7.00 m) Length: 10 ft 6 in (3.20 m) Wing area: 204.5 sq.ft. (19,00 sq.m) Gross weight: 531 lb (241 kg) Seats: 1
This two-seater powered sailplane was developed jointly by VTC of Yugoslavia and Sigmund Flugtechnik of West Germany, under the design leadership of Dipl-lng Alfred Vogt and Dipl-lng Ivan Sostaric. The prototype, registered YU-M6009, made its maiden flight on 24 June 1972 in the hands of VTC test pilot A.Stanojevic; it was certificated in May 1973 and an initial order for 10 was placed by the end of that year. The SSV-17 is a low-wing monoplane of glassfibre sandwich construction with a conventional retractable undercarriage, seating two side-by-side; it resembles the Rumanian IS-28M2, but has a swept-back fin and rudder and a low-set tailplane; the fin spar is of steel tube. The wing has a light alloy main spar and Schempp-Hirth air brakes above and below, but there are no flaps. The fuselage is a semi-monocoque structure and the fuselage/wing centre section, 6ft 6%in wide, forms the cabin floor and also serves as the wing spar carry-through structure. The main wheels have coil spring shock-absorption and retract upwards into ‘knuckle’ fairings, remaining semi-exposed when retracted to minimise damage in a wheels-up landing. The tailwheel is fixed and steerable. The powerplant is a Franklin 2A-120-A two-cylinder horizontally-opposed engine of 60hp driving a two blade Hoffman propeller; but following the Franklin Engine Co’s cessation of engine manufacture the rights to produce and market this company’s range of air-cooled piston engines was acquired by Pezetel of Poland in 1975, to power such types as the Polish built PZL-110 Rallye. It is believed that only the initial batch of 10 SSV-17s was built.
Span: 55 ft 9.25 in Length: 23 ft 11.5 in Height: 9 ft 3.75 in Wing area: 199.1 sqft Aspect ratio: 15.65 Empty weight: 943 lb Max weight: 1,472 lb Max level speed: 155 mph (power on) Cruising speed: 99.5 mph (power on) Best glide ratio: 29:1 (unpowered) Min sinking speed: 2.79 ft/sec (unpowered) Take-off run: 820 ft Range: 497 miles
A tandem two-seat kit-built monoplane developed in Venezuela. First flown in January 1997.
Overlapping pusher propellers are mounted close in to the fuselage and the wingspan can be extended for special applications. Can be flown with or without the cabin doors. An optional ag-spray kit was available. The kit did cost US$24,995.
Top speed: 100 mph Cruise: 60 mph Stall: 22 mph Range: 250 sm Rate of climb: 1200 fpm Takeoff dist: 100 ft Landing dist: 200 ft Service ceiling: 15,000 ft HP range: 52-100 Fuel capacity: 24 USG Empty weight: 700 lb Gross weight: 1400 lb Height: 7.5 ft Length: 22 ft Wing span: 32 ft Wing area: 160 sq.ft Seats: 2 Landing gear: tailwheel
All Aero 