Handley Page H.P.22

The Handley Page H.P.22 was a single-seat sport monoplane built for the 1923 Lympne light aircraft trials, together with its sister type the H.P.23. The Lympne competition of October 1923 offered prizes worth a total of 2,150 pounds and drew 28 entries. Handley Page entered three aircraft designed by W. H. Sayers, technical editor of The Aeroplane, which owed much to a glider he had designed with Frank Courtney and Maurice Wright for the Itford Hill gliding competition the year before. The company only later gave them type numbers, naming competition numbers 23 and 25 the H.P.22 and number 26 the H.P.23. The H.P.22 had a span of 36 feet 6 inches and was driven by a tiny 397 cc ABC flat-twin engine of 8 horsepower mounted on a pylon ahead of the pilot. Number 23 could not be made to fly; number 25 was rebuilt with a lowered wing and faired nose and took part in the competition without success.