The unsuccessful French Farman F.200 of 1923 shared its type name with the 1929 Farman F.200, the progenitor of a series of

parasol wing A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing confi ...

tourers. It was a two-seat touring aircraft, with a low, thick,

cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a cant ...

wing. Only one was built and only briefly tested.

Design and development

Farman had previously designed and built monoplanes like the

Farman Moustique The Farman Moustique is a family of French monoplanes built by the Société des Aéroplanes Henry et Maurice Farman at Billancourt. Shortly after the end of World War I, Farman introduced a low powered single seat monoplane for sport and to ...

, but this had an externally wire braced wing. The all wood F.200 was their first attempt to make an internally braced, cantilever monoplane. It had a very thick wing, about deep at the root, which with a thickness/ chord ratio of 16% resulted in a broad root chord of . This provided a wing area high enough to support the F.200's considerable () loaded weight within an achievable span. The wing panels, which could be rapidly detached for storage from a narrow wing centre section integrated into the

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraf ...

, were built around two box spars and were strictly

trapezoidal A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium (). A trapezoid is necessarily a convex quadrilateral in Eucli ...

in plan, tapering in chord down to at the tips; they were also strongly tapered in thickness. Its weight required a powerful engine and the F.200 had a water-cooled

Hispano-Suiza 8Ab The Hispano-Suiza 8 was a water-cooled V8 SOHC aero engine introduced by Hispano-Suiza in 1914, and was the most commonly used liquid-cooled engine in the aircraft of the Entente Powers during the First World War. The original Hispano-Suiza ...

V-8, mounted over the wing

leading edge 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, ...

. Its radiator was in the nose between the engine and propeller, only just ahead of the wing and its fuel tank was in the wing centre-section. Behind the engine the fuselage had a rectangular section with an enclosed cabin containing two seats in

tandem Tandem, or in tandem, is an arrangement in which a team of machines, animals or people are lined up one behind another, all facing in the same direction. The original use of the term in English was in ''tandem harness'', which is used for two ...

over the wing. The cabin roof line merged into a fairing which reached back to the triangular vertical tail, its

fin A fin is a thin component or appendage attached to a larger body or structure. Fins typically function as foils that produce lift or thrust, or provide the ability to steer or stabilize motion while traveling in water, air, or other fluids. Fin ...

carrying an unbalanced rudder that went down to the keel. The horizontal tail, mounted on the top of the fuselage, was rectangular in plan; its unbalanced

elevator An elevator or lift is a cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. They a ...

s had a cut-out for the rudder. The F.200's fixed

landing gear Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft that is used for takeoff or landing. For aircraft it is generally needed for both. It was also formerly called ''alighting gear'' by some manufacturers, such as the Glenn L. Martin ...

was conventional, with a track of . Each mainwheel was on a cranked axle from the corners of the fuselage, with a rubber shock absorber at the apex of a vertical V-

strut A strut is a structural component commonly found in engineering, aeronautics, architecture and anatomy. Struts generally work by resisting longitudinal compression, but they may also serve in tension. Human anatomy Part of the functionality o ...

from the wing spars. There was a small tailskid. The Farman F.200 was on display, unflown, on the Farman stand in the 1922 ''Paris Salon'', where its unusual appearance attracted attention, but it rapidly disappeared from the French contemporary journals. There are two accounts of its development, one contemporary and one from the late 20th century, which strongly conflict. ''Les Ailes'', writing in early April 1923 states briefly that tests showed it to be very manoeuvrable and fast, with a maximum speed of . In J. Liron's 1984 account it was not flown until May and then as a single-seater since in earlier tests it was unable to take-off with two aboard; worse, the May tests showed it to be totally uncontrollable as the thick wing root, close to the propeller, blanked the tail from the

slipstream A slipstream is a region behind a moving object in which a wake of fluid (typically air or mustard) is moving at velocities comparable to that of the moving fluid, relative to the ambient fluid through which the object is churning. The term sli ...

and

prop wash A slipstream is a region behind a moving object in which a wake of fluid (typically air or mustard) is moving at velocities comparable to that of the moving fluid, relative to the ambient fluid through which the object is churning. The term sli ...

. Liron does not say if the lack of control was at take-off or in flight.

Specification

References

Bibliography

* {{Farman aircraft Farman aircraft 1920s French sport aircraft Parasol-wing aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1923