Alfaro aircraft designations

c460

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Here is a summary of Alfaro aircraft:
- Alfaro 1, glider
- Alfaro 2, monoplane, 1914
- Alfaro 3, two-seat derivative of the Alfaro 2 (mentioned in Aérea and nowhere else)
- Alfaro 4, observation biplane started by Alfaro and completed by Talleres Hereter, 1917
- Alfaro 5, biplane trainer, certainly corresponds to the Talleres Heterer TH E.2, single-seat copy of the Caudron G.3
- Alfaro 6, biplane trainer, ertainly corresponds to the Talleres Heterer TH E.2, two-seat copy of the Caudron G.3
- Alfaro 7, biplane fighter, derivative of the España (itself an evolution of the Spad VII redesigned by Barrón)
- Alfaro 8, biplane fighter, entered at the 1919 military aircraft competition, was damaged and could not finish the competition
- Alfaro 9, an unidentified Dayton-Wright single-seat all-metal combat airplane with 350hp radial engine, designed by Alfaro in the US
- Alfaro 10, three-seat transport biplane made in the US with Curtiss 90hp engine
- Alfaro 11, single-seat light sesquiplane with Bristol Cherub engine, designed in Spain, whose construction was perhaps not completed
- Alfaro 12, might possibly correspond to the NAS Air King modified by Alvaro as the "City of Peoria", 1927
- Alfaro X-13 or SA-1 (SA = Safety Airplane ?), high-wing monoplane entered c.1928 at the Guggenheim Safe Aircraft Competition, which lasted from 1927 to 1929
- Alfaro PTG-2, glider
- Pitcairn-Alfaro PCA-2-30, autogyro

The main source is the attached extract from the Spanish magazine Aérea, May 1924, complemented by various other sources.

I have started another thread under "Early Aircraft Projects" to discuss some of the designs:
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,21318.0.html
 

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In 1927, Alfaro also made modifications to an ordinary NAS Air King, turning it into the "City of Peoria" participant in the Dole Trophy California-to-Hawaii air race. This possibly corresponds to the Alfaro 12.
 
Great find my dear C460,


I want this list from long time ago,that designer hard to find anything about it,
except his work in USA.
 
Hi, here it is a picture of the Alfaro 8 Fighter taken from the magazine "Revista Aeroplano" (20/2002) you can download for free in the official page of the Ejercito del Aire at this link
I hope you will like it! :)
 

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Very strange,

the Alfaro Model-1 was not glider,here;

http://flyingmachines.ru/Site2/Crafts/Craft30173.htm
 
hesham said:
Very strange,

the Alfaro Model-1 was not glider,here;

http://flyingmachines.ru/Site2/Crafts/Craft30173.htm

Hi Hesham,
This is the Alfaro 2, without any doubt. The source of the website is a quiz forum, this is not 100% reliable.
Adrien
 
Thank you my dear Adrien,and welcome your return.
 
Hi in looking at various sources of information regarding Heraclio Alfaro I found this one, http://www.aeroclubvitoria.net/en-los-medios/pdf/elcorreo-ala-20171002-010.pdf which I have translated via Google (so apologies for the grammatical errors) for the non-Spanish speaking members. Of note, is that the Alfaro 1 is mentioned as a powered aircraft, which first flew in 1914, much the same timeline as the Alfaro 2. Whether he had two types within the same year, I do not know, but as this above source is from the flying club dedicated to the man himself, it does make me think that this is a good source of what the Alfaro 1 actually was.
'Heraclio Alfaro is without doubt one of the great inventors of Alava and occupies a position of honour in the list that Americans have made the pioneers of world aviation. He is the only Spanish. And together with Alfaro is Vitoria, the city where the first plane was built, the peninsular and the group of collaborators and friends that surrounded the inventor. The credit goes to Heraclius, above all, but much has to see in this fact the geographical situation of Vitoria and its unbeatable conditions for the landing of airplanes in the Llanada.
Heraclio Alfaro was born in Vitoria on September 20, 1893. He was the grandson of Heraclio Fournier and son of Juan Bautista Alfaro. Of breed comes to the greyhound. His predecessors were successful men, entrepreneurs with a vision ahead of their time. As early as 1910, at just 16 years old, he joins friends, all of them great military aviators, Ramón Ciria, José Martínez de Aragón and Hidalgo de Cisneros, to mount and test a glider, a plane without an engine, which was about to cost him life to Ciria.
The Vitorian chronicler José Luis Sáenz de Ugarte assures in his book ‘Heraclio Alfaro, aviator, inventor, aeronautical engineer’, that the adventure of creating the first plane started late 1913. He was barely 20 years old and his passion for flight had been born as a child. «He locked himself in a fish market on Florida Street, owned by his father, who had in
Vitoria a factory of bags of jute. In the realization of ‘Alfaro I, ’which is what we call him for being the first to develop, had the collaboration of a group of enthusiastic people from Vitoria ».
In the late spring of 1914 the airplane is finished. It is a torpedo type monoplane, a seven-cylinder engine and 50 HP horses. All the timber was built in the Garayo workshops and the assembly of the engine and other mechanical parts, in Larramendi's garage. On June 7, 1914, the plane it was practically finished and the first tests were done with the landing gear. The final takeoff of Alfaro Fournier's plane took place on Monday 22 June and left about 25,000 people from Vitoria amazed who were able to observe how a noisy wood, metal and canvas artifact —Piloted by a man who he waved his arms - he flew over for more than half hour and at a height greater than 500 meters from the city of Vitoria and
its surroundings. The plane reached speeds of more than 100 kilometers per hour. On June 23 it climbed up to a thousand meters.
The Heraldo Alavés of the 23rd of June 1914 collected an enthusiastic chronicle signed under the pseudonym Champion in which the specialist Ignacio Abreu emphasized that the device devised by Alfaro «is a monoplane, with a stabilization system in inverted tail ». The dimensions of the apparatus were smaller than those of any other airplane of those times. Also original were the landing gear and the way of application of the fuselage to wings, which allowed the pilot more easily handle the plane. Abreu confirms that
«It is the first Spanish apparatus built and the only one that has achieved complete success ».
To the United States
The joy in the city was unspeakable and tributes were prepared. Alfaro took his prototype to Madrid and there he flew it in Cuatro Vientos. He visited the Prime Minister,
Eduardo Dato, who went to see the Vitorian flights. Also did exhibitions in Salamanca where he suffered an accident from which he emerged unscathed. During the second of
the flights, at the time of landing, the device bonded. The historic airplane was repaired and He flew again in Vitoria. Alfaro built another eight
prototypes before going to United States, where he was recognized as a scientist and aircraft builder. He worked as an engineer at MIT in Massachusetts and built the famous De la Cierva autogyro.'
 
In the process of my research into Heraclio Alfaro Fournier, I have come across a number of pictures which I will present here.
The first shows the man himself and a design listed as the Alfaro I
Heraclio_Alfaro_Fournier & Alfaro I.png
Next up from the US ventures of Heraclio, is the two gliders which he had a hand in. The first was a primary glider, which I would work out must be the PTG-2 from the list that c460 produced in the first post in this subject matter. I also include a shot showing how easy it was to store the design for road transportation.
5318926401_8825a558f9_k (1).jpg 5318930181_4855162ad2_k.jpg
The other glider which does not feature in c460's list is a high wing example, which unusually had a tailwheel undercarriage unlike many other gliders of that period.
5319523898_6bd385dd6a_k.jpg 5319514512_ff47639a80_k.jpg
The next example of Alfaro Fournier's US designs was the Guggenheim entry for the 1929 competition, the Alfaro X-13 or SA-1.
5319512150_1fd56157eb_k (1).jpg 5319533934_db4fdc2a7d_k.jpg
Going to his autogiro, which was based on de la Cierva's plans and built for Harold Pitcairn, here's both construction and the craft fully assembled
5318956741_eaeec5ee0c_k.jpg 5319564586_6b350bbfba_k.jpg 5319546738_5b4289298d_k.jpg 5319552552_7375c0a8d6_k.jpg
Finally the possible Alfaro 12, a modified NAS Air King
5318917601_4983d51731_k.jpg 5318942521_d6251bdd0b_k.jpg
 

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Hi Victor, according to the c460's list, the Alfaro I was a glider. But your photo shows a motorized airplane. Is this called the Alfaro II?
 

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