Bristol Racer
| Racer | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Photo from Bristol Aircraft archive, possibly showing a model rather than the actual aircraft | |
| Role | Single-seat racing monoplane |
| National origin | United Kingdom |
| Manufacturer | Bristol Aeroplane Company |
| Designer | W. T. Reid |
| First flight | 1922 |
| Number built | 1 |
The Bristol Type 72 Racer was a British racing monoplane designed by Wilfrid Thomas Reid and built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company at Filton, England.
The Bristol Racer was built to demonstrate the capabilities of the Bristol Jupiter engine designed by Roy Fedden. Frank Barnwell had resisted the idea of a special aircraft, maintaining that the Bristol Bullet was adequate for the purpose, but when Barnwell left the company in October 1921 Fedden and Wilfrid Reid, Barnwell's successor as chief designer, started to work on a monoplane design featuring a wholly enclosed engine. Detail design work was authorised on 5 December, and an order issued to the factory for a single aircraft on 23 January 1922.
The Bristol Racer was a single-engined mid-wing monoplane with, unusual for the time, a retractable undercarriage. The 480 hp (360 kW) Bristol Jupiter IV radial engine was entirely enclosed within the circular-section fuselage, with an elaborate arrangement of ducts to channel cooling air over the cylinders. A large spinner with a central opening to admit air, constructed of laminated wood with internal wire bracing was fitted. The fuselage, which increased in diameter until the trailing edge of the wing and then tapered to a point, was built around a pair of circular steel frames to which the wing root stubs were mounted: aft of this structure it was a semi-monocoque built up from three laminations of tulipwood over hoops which were braced with radial wires. The fabric-covered wings had composite steel-and-wood spars and were designed as cantilevers, without bracing wires, and were parallel-chord with raked tips and deep full-span ailerons, which accounted for about 20% of the wing's chord. The undercarriage was operated by a handcrank and chain drive, the legs being housed in channels in the fuselage and the wheels within the wing roots.
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