If, like me, you are a fan of unusual light aircraft, the British lightplane competitions held at Lympne in 1920s are a wealth of prototypes and one-off designs that spawned only a few limited production models, notably the de Havilland Hummingbird and the Westland Widgeon. A few of them are preserved today, including both a Hummingbird and a Hawker Cygnet in the Shuttleworth Collection. I stumbled across a contemporary report presented to the Royal Aeronautical Society and distributed as NACA Technical Memorandum No. 297 while looking for something else in the NASA Technical Reports Server.
Royal Aero Club light aeroplane competition
Author: Buchanan, J S
Publication Year: 1925
Document ID: 19930086647
Accession Number: 93R15937
Report/Patent Number: NACA-TM-297
Updated/Added to NTRS: May 28, 2009
The NTRS scan is quite poor and a ridiculously large .pdf file at 46 MB. I have cleaned it up and pared it down to 9 MB which you can download here. I'd have uploaded it to the forum but it's too big. I have attached as separate .jpg images below the two, two-page printed inserts accompanied the typed report for easier viewing.
Here are links to several more related NACA publications on the NASA Technical Reports Server (1-3 MB each):
TM261 Light airplanes which participated in contest at Lympne, England, October, 1923
TM289 Two-seat light airplanes which participated in contest held at Lympne, England, week of September 29 to October 4, 1924
TM301 Light airplanes of France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania
TM309 Light aeroplane engine development
These reports makes a nice companion to one of my favorite books, Richard Riding's Ultralights: The Early British Classics (Patrick Stevens Ltd., 1987) which includes photos and three-views of the Lympne competition aircraft as well as many other pre-WWII British light aircraft.
Cheers,
Matthew
[Edited to add additional NACA links!]
Royal Aero Club light aeroplane competition
Author: Buchanan, J S
Publication Year: 1925
Document ID: 19930086647
Accession Number: 93R15937
Report/Patent Number: NACA-TM-297
Updated/Added to NTRS: May 28, 2009
The NTRS scan is quite poor and a ridiculously large .pdf file at 46 MB. I have cleaned it up and pared it down to 9 MB which you can download here. I'd have uploaded it to the forum but it's too big. I have attached as separate .jpg images below the two, two-page printed inserts accompanied the typed report for easier viewing.
Here are links to several more related NACA publications on the NASA Technical Reports Server (1-3 MB each):
TM261 Light airplanes which participated in contest at Lympne, England, October, 1923
TM289 Two-seat light airplanes which participated in contest held at Lympne, England, week of September 29 to October 4, 1924
TM301 Light airplanes of France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania
TM309 Light aeroplane engine development
These reports makes a nice companion to one of my favorite books, Richard Riding's Ultralights: The Early British Classics (Patrick Stevens Ltd., 1987) which includes photos and three-views of the Lympne competition aircraft as well as many other pre-WWII British light aircraft.
Cheers,
Matthew
[Edited to add additional NACA links!]