Antoinette VIII

The Antoinette VIII was a French pioneering aircraft flown in 1909, one of the numbered monoplanes that Léon Levavasseur designed for the Antoinette company after the Antoinette IV. It was a high-wing, wire-braced monoplane of conventional layout, with a monocoque fuselage triangular in cross-section, a vertical tail that extended above and below the horizontal stabilizer, and an open cockpit for the pilot. A single 37 kW (50 hp) Antoinette 8V piston engine in the nose drove a tractor propeller, and directional control came from wing-warping. Test pilot Émile Ruchonette first flew it on 15 August 1909, making a series of short flights that ended in a hard landing, and its longest flight lasted 16 minutes on 17 August at Mourmelon. It was flown at the Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne later that month under race number 11 but won no prizes, and Charles Gibbs-Smith records it still flying after the end of the year. Relatively little is known about the aircraft today.