Challenge 1929

The Challenge 1929 was the first FAI International Tourist Plane Contest (French: Challenge International de Tourisme), that took place between August 4 and August 16, 1929 in Paris, France. Four Challenges, from 1929 to 1934, were major aviation events in pre-war Europe.

The contest was conceived by the Aéro-Club de France, inspired by the International Light Aircraft Contest, in France in 1928. The idea of a tourist plane contest was approved by the FAI, and the first Challenge was to be organized by the French.

The contest was opened on August 4, 1929 in Paris. It consisted of two parts: technical trials of aircraft and a rally over Europe. Since one of the aims of the Challenge was to generate a progress in aircraft building, it was not only pilots' competition, but technical trials also included a construction evaluation, to build more advanced tourist planes.

55 aircraft entered the Challenge in 1929, from six countries: Germany (24 crews), Italy (12 crews), France (9 crews), United Kingdom (5 crews), Czechoslovakia (3 crews) and the Swiss (2 crews). In some teams there were also foreign aviators, e.g. in the German team there was the Canadian John Carberry, flying a German RK-25 aircraft; in the French team there were two Belgians. Among the British team, there was one woman Winifred Spooner (the second, Lady Mary Bailey, eventually flew the rally apart from the contest). All planes flew with two-men crews, pilot and passenger or mechanic.

The aircraft in the contest were popular sport planes of the late twenties years, like de Havilland Gipsy Moth (DH-60G), which was the main aircraft of the British team. These aircraft had mostly open cabs, built in low-wing, high-wing or biplane layout. Unlike in the following years, there were no aircraft built specially for a Challenge contest yet, only the Czech Avia BH-11B's "Antilopa" were improved by adding folding wings. All aircraft in the contest had fixed landing gear and had no wing mechanization yet. The most numerous were German BFW M.23b (9 aircraft) and Klemm (6 of the L.25 Ia model, including 2 in the Swiss team, and 2 of the L.26 model). BFW's and Klemms were wooden low-wing planes with open two-seater tandem cabins.

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