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The Ongoing Mystery Aircraft Thread Part Deux.

To keep you busy (for a while) . A twin booms tail with reverse V-tail.
 

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This is the CL-1 Zipper by W.Cleary and Jack Laister. Registered N3999C and fitted with a Kawasaki TA440 engine. She first flew July 1983.

OH please!
 
fabulousfour said:
I found it too, on my laptop and on my ipad as well.

I don't think it is a glider, the center of gravity would be too much forward without a canard, provided that there isn't missing a part of the plane.

Somehow I get the imagination that the mystery is lying upside down, I can't see any windows.
The black dot on the nose might be a part of the nose gear then.

My first thought was that it is a Velocity, but it doesn't quite fit the shape - and where are the canards?
Click to expand...

A couple of thoughts on the "Biggin Hill mystery":
Google Earth 'stiches' tiles, and not all are from the same date, which is the case here. Depending on the date you end up loading, and where your view is centered, you may be looking at images from different dates. In this case (for example, at 1600 ft 'eye alt.') you see two different tones to the image. Mouse over the north half and you'll see a fairly recent (2017) date, but hovering over the hangars and mystery a/c you get July 18, 2013. Easy to check if you got thru the 'historical imagery' (the clock icon at the top) and you'll see the identical image.

However, if you go back a bit further - to August 21, 2011 - there is, in the same location, clearly a canard a/c (in poor resolution) but complete and facing the opposite direction. Note that GE does not always default to the latest images and sometimes those shift as you zoom in/out as it's loading. Once loaded, you keep that data until you reload/restart/update. I have an idea why, but that's irrelevant.

I did a bit of measuring and the 2011 and 2013 images come out with a wingspan of 30 ft (very close) which matches a Velocity XL (other versions vary slightly) and definitely larger than a Long-EZ's 26 ft. It appears the engine/prop have been removed and likely some part of the nose structure as well to facilitate removal of the canard plane. Lack of a visible cockpit may be due to a tarp or cover over the rest of the fuselage which would be logical with bits removed. It could be another type, but the wing planform matches - the Long-Ex and Berkut for example have a double taper to the inboard leading edge.

Sorry for the length, but photo-interpretation gets messy.
 

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Rob, congratulations on some brilliant detective work ! I agree 100% with your conclusions, and that the mystery is indeed a 'modified' Rutan.....

Google Earth and its updates are something of an issue with me - the default scenery for my area dates back to 2006 and Google's excuse for not updating is that there is a lot of cloud in Scotland, and 'thinly populated'.

So I checked the wettest, cloudiest and most remote location I could find (the south-west tip of New Zealand ) to find scenery dating 2014. Even that other highly-populated area, the dead centre of the Sahara, is 2013. Grrr.....
 
Pomme Homme's aircraft might be the Glenny & Henderson Gadfly G-AAEY without her extra wing-tip ailerons.



Also my thanks to srgalahad for the excellent detective work!
 
Exactement, Uli - it is the Gadfly when it had conventional ailerons. I believe that the photograph was taken at Penshurst. It's one of a collection given to me by the son of the gentlemen who took the photographs - which presumably date from April/May 1929. But enough of this and over to Germany.
 
Lot of contenders in the Curtiss/Great Lakes/Martin/Douglas Navy line but in this case I would say the Douglas XT3D-1.
 
Thanks Uli.

Moving right along...

uG7YzH1.jpg
 
The craft has some very Nieuport-ish lines, especially the sesquiplane-wing faired to the undercarriage.
The engine is probably an inverted Hispano 12Gb or a related type, but I can't get any further with this at the moment. :pop4:
 
Yes I've been through the Nieuport book with a fine toothcomb too !

Also, Kevin has photoshopped out a disc of some sort on the fuselage - made me think it might be Oriental ?
 
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