Carden-Baynes
| Carden-Baynes Bee | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Role | Two-seat touring aircraft |
| National origin | United Kingdom |
| Manufacturer | Carden-Baynes |
| Designer | Leslie Baynes |
| First flight | 3 April 1937 |
| Number built | 1 |
The Carden-Baynes Bee was a 1930s British two-seat aircraft, with twin engines in pusher configuration buried in the wings. The wings rotated for storage. Financial problems limited the Bee to a single flight.
Carden Aero Engines was established by Sir John Carden to produce aircraft engines from modified Ford car engines, these becoming known as Carden-Fords. He had collaborated with the aircraft designer Leslie Baynes on the Carden-Baynes Auxiliary, a motor-assisted version of the Abbott-Baynes Scud 3 designed earlier by Baynes, which flew in the summer of 1935. In December 1935, Carden was killed in an airliner crash, but in April 1936 Baynes went on to set up Carden-Baynes Aircraft Ltd. Its first product, the Bee, was to exploit a patent applied for by Baynes in December 1933, and granted in June 1935, for a pusher aircraft with a wing that rotated rather than folded for storage. It was to use a pair of supercharged Carden-Ford engines specially configured for the Bee so that they would operate on their sides, within the wing.
A few other aircraft had already used a rotating wing, for example the Koolhoven FK.30 of 1927, which was a single-engined pod and boom pusher and the Guldentops monoplane of 1934. The Bee was also unusual in putting together what Flight called "Twin-engined security, pusher airscrews, ample performance and vision, and non-acrobatic entry...", though in the end these qualities were not tested.
The cantilever wing of the Bee was of novel construction, built around a wide box formed from four spanwise spruce members connected with ply, constant in chord but tapering in thickness. Aerofoil shaped ribs were then slipped around the box and fabric covered. The wings had almost constant chord, tapering in plan only slightly and carrying long ailerons. A 40 hp (30 kW) four-cylinder water-cooled Carden-Ford engine lay buried in each wing immediately behind the box spar, driving a small two-bladed propeller via a gearbox, which increased the output speed by 10%, and a shaft to the trailing edge. These shafts were horizontal in flight, and so emerged above the wing surface on the way rearwards, contained in a shallow cowling. Radiators were mounted inside the wing, next to the engine, the cooling air ducted from under the front of the wing and exited via slots in the rear of the cowling. Fuel was stored in leading-edge tanks.
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Wikipedia