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Showing results for tags 'Burguess Cup Defender'.
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A model from 8 years ago for the Pioneer thread: The Burgess Cup Defender was an honorable but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to grant US representation and participation in the 1912 Gordon Bennett race, backed by the members of the Illinois Aero Club who formed an ad-hoc organization in Chicago. As one in three millions among you will surely know, the race was won by Monsieur Vedrines and its modernist Deperdussin, being second Monsieur Prevost with an almost identical machine (more on the Deperdussin on a future article). The Cup Defender was a traditional machine design-wise, with wing-warp roll control a la Wright (no ailerons for you rail-road modelers), whose goal was not innovation but reliability. It had a two-row 14 cylinder Gnome rotary, the best you could get at the time, but no pilot was found willing to fly it since at that time controls were not standardized. The research to make the model was lengthy but fruitful, and required many hours on the Net exploring arcane beginning-of-the-XX-century publications in the darkest, almost inaccessible crags of the Virtual World. Home-made decals were used to depict the plywood areas on the fuselage tail and the “Burgess” legend on the cockpit sides. Although this plane was the product of well-intended citizens, the “Cup Defender” -that never had a chance to prove its value- illustrates the contemporary more conservative thinking. As fate had it, it was the much modern and daring French Deperdussin Monocoque the one that took the trophy.- 6 replies
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