Voisin Type Bordeaux

The Voisin Type Bordeaux was an aircraft built by Voisin Freres in 1910 and named for the record flight Juan Bielovucic made in it from Paris to Bordeaux. It differed significantly from earlier Voisin designs in dropping the forward-mounted elevator. A two-bay, equal-span pusher biplane, it was powered by a 37 kW (50 hp) Gnome Omega seven-cylinder rotary engine driving an aluminium-bladed propeller at the rear of an uncovered wooden nacelle, with steel tubing throughout the structure, rubberised fabric covering and large D-shaped ailerons on the upper wing worked by foot pedals. Bielovucic flew the 540 km in September 1910 in four stages over three days, 6 hours 15 minutes in the air, setting a new cross-country record and earning a medal from the Bordeaux Departmental Assembly. Two-seat production variants followed, the Type Militaire and the Type de Tourisme, and the Militaire led eventually to the Voisin L of 1912.