The Bonomi BS.8 Biancone ( en, Short-toed Snake Eagle) was a single-seat

training glider Training is teaching, or developing in oneself or others, any skills and knowledge or fitness that relate to specific useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one's capability, capacity, productivity and performance. It ...

designed and built in Italy in the 1930s. It was developed from the Bonomi BS.7 Allievo Italia primary glider.

Design and development

The BS.8 Biancone was a higher performance version of the BS.7 primary trainer. The two designs, both high-wing monoplanes, shared a fuselage boom, empennage and wing bracing struts, but the later type had a nacelle with a conventional open

cockpit A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft or spacecraft, from which a Pilot in command, pilot controls the aircraft. The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the ...

and a pedestal in place of the B.7's simple boom and open girder, together with a new wing of much higher aspect ratio. The new wing was a wooden two spar structure, largely fabric-covered, like the old. The forward spar was close to the leading edge; from it forward around the edge the wing was

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

covered, forming a torque-resistant D-box; aft the covering was fabric. The rear spar was just behind mid-

chord Chord may refer to: * Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously ** Guitar chord a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning * Chord (geometry), a line segment joining two points on a curve * Chord ( ...

. The central panel, occupying a little under half the span, was straight-edged and had constant

. Outboard the wing was straight tapered to rounded tips,

aileron An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in roll (or movement around ...

s occupying all the trailing edge. The centre section was supported by the fuselage pedestal and braced on each side by steel asymmetric V-form struts. These were fixed to the two spars close to the ends of the centre panels and to the fuselage boom directly below the leading edge. It had both a greater span and a lower area than that of the BS.7, increasing the aspect ratio from 7.5 to 12.4. Like the BS.7, the BS.8 had a fuselage based on a slender, triangular-cross-section, plywood-covered beam, sloping upwards aft from below the leading edge to place the strut braced triangular tailplane at the same height as the wing, on top of a trapezoidal fin. The fin carried a deep, unbalanced rudder, rectangular except at the bottom where it was cropped to match the keel line of the boom. It worked in a notch between the two otherwise rectangular elevators, also unbalanced. The beam now extended to the nose, with a rubber-sprung landing skid attached below it, starting near the nose and reaching back almost to the wing trailing edge. The BS.8 had a conventional, fabric-covered upper fuselage or nacelle on top of the beam from its nose to well behind the trailing edge. The pilot's position was, as before, under the leading edge, but he was now in a "comfortable" cockpit with an "ovoid" seat. The BS.8 flew for the first time in about 1933, having been first registered in July 1932. Six were built. For a time, one was fitted with floats so that it sat on water with its hull immersed and could be tow-launched behind a motor-boat.

Specifications

References

{{Bonomi aircraft 1930s Italian sailplanes Aircraft first flown in 1933