The Bulté RB.1 was a
Belgian training and touring
biplane
A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...
first flown in 1928. Five examples flew with clubs and with private owners in contests and rallies.
Design and development
Until June 1928 Renée Bulté had been head of design with
Ateliers de Construction Aéronautique de Zeebruges, usually known as ZACCO and one of the pioneers of all-metal aircraft manufacture. He left them to found his own company, Avions Bulté & Cie. Its first product, the RB.1 tandem seat
training aircraft, flew towards the end of the year.
[
The RB.1 was a simple, conventional, two-bay biplane with thin-section, equal span wings mounted without stagger. One feature of the design was the interchangeability of components; as an example, the wing panels were identical. Such interchangeability reduced the stocks of spares required. The lower wings were attached to the lower fuselage structure and the upper ones to a fuselage-wide centre section held well above the fuselage by four upright ]cabane strut
In aeronautics, bracing comprises additional structural members which stiffen the functional airframe to give it rigidity and strength under load. Bracing may be applied both internally and externally, and may take the form of strut, which act in ...
s from the upper fuselage. Both upper and lower wing-sets were mounted with 3° of dihedral and were braced together with two pairs of identical, parallel interplane struts on each side, assisted by the usual wire cross-bracing. Both had short, broad-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 ( ...
ailerons which reached the wingtips and were externally interconnected. Structurally, each wing was built around two spruce
A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the subfami ...
spars
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) Women's Reserve, also known as the SPARS (SPARS was the acronym for "Semper Paratus—Always Ready"), was the women's branch of the United States Coast Guard Reserve. It was established by the United States ...
and had 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 leading edges
The leading edge of an airfoil surface such as a wing is its foremost edge and is therefore the part which first meets the oncoming air.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 305. Aviation Supplies & Academics, ...
.[
The trainer was powered by an ]Anzani 6
Alessandro Anzani developed the first two-row radial from his earlier 3- cylinder Y engine by merging two onto the same crankshaft with a common crankweb.
Development
By December 1909 Anzani had a 3-cylinder air-cooled true radial engine runn ...
six-cylinder radial engine in the nose, fitted with a narrow-chord ring cowling. Immediately behind the engine the fuselage was five-sided, rectangular below but sloping on top, and was covered with aluminium sheets back to the wing leading edge. This region contained both fuel and oil tanks. Behind it, the fuselage was formed around four wooden longerons, ash to the rear of the 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 spruce further aft. The ash-framed part had three-ply covered sides and a thin aluminium underside and the rear fuselage was canvas covered, including domed rear decking.[
Normally the instructor and student sat one behind the other in a long, single, open cockpit, equipped with dual control. The front seat was under the wing but the rear one was behind the trailing edge, which had a rectangular cut-out for better upward vision. Alternatively, the seats could be arranged tightly side-by-side, though with slight stagger, which allowed single controls to be shared and eased communication.][
The RB.1's empennage was conventional, with a broad-chord, rectangular plan tailplane mounted on top of the fuselage and carrying elevators with a large central cut-out for rudder movement. Its triangular fin mounted a parallelogram profile rudder which reached down to the keel.][
It had conventional, fixed landing gear, with its mainwheels on a single axle and a wide track of about . The axle was joined through rubber cord shock absorbers to a fixed pair of transverse steel tubes supported by a pair of steel V-struts mounted on the lower fuselage longerons. Its tailskid was externally mounted on a little steel tube pyramid, with a knee-type rubber cord shock absorber.][
]
Operational history
The Bulté RB.1 first flew towards the end of 1928, though the exact date is not known. Five appeared on the Belgian civil aircraft register between 1929 and 1931.[
One took part in the ''Tour du France des Avions de Tourisme'' around France in May 1931][ and another in the Auvergne rally in July that year.][
In the UK sales efforts were handled by Sealandair][ but no examples were registered.][
]
Specifications (RB.1)
References
{{reflist, 2, refs=
[{{cite journal , last=Frachet , first=André , date=8 November 1928 , title=L'avion-école Bulté R.B.1, journal=Les Ailes, issue=386 , pages=3, url=http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6554616z/f3]
[{{cite journal, date=7 May 1931 , title=Le tour du France des avions de Tourisme, journal=Les Ailes, issue=516 , pages=13–15, url=http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k65557653/f15]
[{{cite journal, date=9 July 1931 , title=Portal à gagné le rally Auvergne, journal=Les Ailes, issue=525 , pages=6, url=http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k65557742/f6]
[{{cite journal , date=27 June 1930 , title=A Belgian training machine, journal= Flight, volume=XXII , issue=29 , pages=678 , url= https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1930/untitled0%20-%200718.html]
[{{cite web , url=http://www.airhistory.org.uk/gy/reg_OO-.html, title=Golden Years of Aviation , author= , date= , work= , publisher= , accessdate=15 August 2017]
[{{cite web , url=http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/modalapplication.aspx?appid=1, title=GINFO Database Search , accessdate=15 August 2017]
1920s Belgian aircraft