EAA Sport Aviation - January 2012

Chad Wille, a master craftsman of aeronautical machines, has spent his life building and restoring antique airplanes and engines. His newly completed Blériot replica is as authentic as Chad’s tireless research, and available materials, could produce.

“This is a pioneer aircraft that must be
operated more conservatively than any other
airplane built since,” Chad said. “Flights
beyond the perimeter of the airport should
be made only in dead calm air, which is cool
and has good lift.”
Chad has written an aircraft flight and
maintenance manual that gives us a glimpse
of the period. “Flights in the pioneer period
were typically not longer than 30 minutes or
higher than 100 feet, and training flights
could often be measured in seconds. Five
hundred feet was a record height in 1910,” he
wrote in the manual.

The Blériot XI was one of the first mass-produced airplanes, with more than 900 being built between 1910 and 1914. Like the Wright brothers’ designs, the Blériot XI controlled roll by warping the wings. Wing warping is effective in calm winds but responds more slowly than ailerons in windy conditions. Crosswind landings and takeoffs should not be attempted, due to the lack of controllability.

Aircraft engines of the day were small and unreliable. The Blériot XI boasted a 28-hp Anzani three-cylinder fan engine swinging a two-bladed Chauviere propeller. Fan engines have the cylinders arranged similar to a W; therefore, they were sometimes called W engines. Imagine a radial sliced horizontally in half at the prop, with the bottom half discarded.

The technology of aviation engines at the time was very limited. They would often begin to overheat and malfunction after as little as 20 minutes of operation. Only seven months before Blériot’s flight, Wilbur Wright had set the world aeronautical endurance record with an unthinkable flight of two hours and 20 minutes. On tour in Europe at the time, Wilbur wrote to Orville of his intention to enter the cross-channel competition himself and win the Daily Mail prize. Orville’s response was enough to cool Wilbur’s

passion: “I do not much like the idea. I
haven’t much faith in your motor running.”
The Anzani is designed with a total-loss
oil system. All the castor oil delivered to the
engine is thrown out of the exhaust in com-
bustion. The pilot meters the oil to the
engine by turning a brass knob in the cock-
pit, controlling the oil pump. It also has no
throttle control, but there is little need to
run a 28-hp engine at anything other than
full power. For landing and taxiing the
engine power is controlled by a blip switch,
or “coupe,” which interrupts the ignition.

British customs logged him in as a ships master.

And his aircraft? The yacht Blériot XI.

Chad doesn’t rotate on takeoff, as this would stall the wing. He lets it fly itself off. It requires a significant degree of finesse. Pull back slightly and the Blériot flies; pull back slightly more and the tremendous induced drag of the wing will cause it to sink back to the ground. On landing, the aircraft is flown right onto the runway in a tail-high attitude with the engine still producing full power.

First Flights

After only a short run with the engine chattering away purposely, the Blériot seems to simply levitate into the air. The thin tires hover mere feet above the runway as the craft ever so slowly approaches. Traveling in slow motion at only 35 mph, Chad’s bugeyed, oil-splattered goggles are clearly evident as he passes. The Blériot could take off and land many times over in the runway’s length, but instead sails serenely by no more than 10 feet in the air. At runway’s end, Chad simply flies it on, and with the blip switch cutting the engine, the craft comes quickly to a stop. Only a short hop this quiet evening—a short hop that has spanned a century.

While we have become inured to such
feats as we traverse the globe in mere
hours, men like Louis Blériot were gods of
their day, able to leave the face of this
planet, if ever so briefly, and return once
again. The peril and bravado of Louis
Blériot’s English Channel crossing was cast
in a stark light only a couple of weeks after
Chad’s first flight.

the legaCy

Pioneer aviators like Blériot took great personal risks to advance aviation and leave us their legacy of flight. The enormity of this achievement can be appreciated only in the context of the times when horses, not tractors, tilled the fields and the first Model T’s were only then leaving the factory doors. On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright launched a new era by making the first powered flight, spanning 12 seconds of time and 120 feet of distance. Only five years later, Louis Blériot made the world a much smaller place by bridging the peoples of mainland Europe and Great Britain over the stormy channel seas. Adventurers, explorers, pilgrims of the heavens—their voyages of discovery inspire us still today.

Note: Both Chad and his Blériot were unharmed and will return next year with either the Anzani or a Gnome rotary engine turning the Blériot’s propeller.

Jeff Skiles, EAA 366120, has been a pilot for 34

years and has almost 21,000 hours logged. He is EAA Young Eagles co-chairman, owns a 1935 Waco YOC cabin biplane, and was first officer on US Airways Flight 1549, the Miracle on the Hudson. Visit www.SportAviation.org to see a photo gallery and Chad’s manuals.