WW1 Airhead..

[Lucky_Lou]

Part of the commemorations for the start of WW1 featured 2 aeroplanes in Leeds city centre, look closely at the Eastchurch Kitten its an airhead in the purest sense, I wonder if it was a copy of a German plane.
 http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2014-05-21/fighter-planes-takeover-leeds-city-centre-for-great-war-commemoration/
Lou
Errr smile boys you won

[Barry]

Looks to have been a British design.

45HP out of a 2.3 litre engine doesn't seem much but then it had a compression ration of only 3.8 : 1  running on 40-50 octane fuel.

How about this. ABC also made motorcycles and before BMW:

In 1918, ABC made a motorcycle with a 500 cc flat-twin engine mounted with its cylinders across the frame, several years before BMW adapted the design. Bradshaw challenged BMW's use of his patented design in 1926

Looks like we lost that one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_Gnat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_motorcycles

[nhmaf]

I'd wondered if the airplane engine was based upon the early Douglas motorcycle engines - as they had developed a flat-twin engine in the early 1900s and developed it in greater displacements for motorcycles and even "cyclecars" for decades

[clonmore1]

As usual our superb engineers never given the chance to develop the technology and off it goes abroad...

How EVER did we rule the world ( and so much of it...) :-/

[Luca]

As usual our superb engineers never given the chance to develop the technology and off it goes abroad...

How EVER did we rule the world ( and so much of it...)  

It was all going well until you went from wood and canvas steel and electricity  

No offense, but I've been working on antique British sports cars for the last four months and already have noticed a handful of glaring design choices... some of which were perpetuated far longer than they should have been.  Add to that poor manufacturing and you end up with cars and motorcycles that, while lots of fun and full of charm, are prone to failure and require consistent fettling.

[Motu]

British design was technicaly superior to American stuff, they were just strapped for cash to develop anything - that's how the Lola became the Ford GT40, a great design with some money poured into it.

[clonmore1]

No offence taken, it is what it is...

I agree, as a country, we are notorious for under funding anything that doesn't work immediately.

It's not just in mechanical engineering, it's across the culture. In the late 60's and early 70's we sold off the empire (what was left of it), took a short term view of our military capability and then rolled into the union led mid 70's where the British bike industry finally gave up closely followed by our woeful motor industry. One of my mates worked at Cowley in the late 70's and through to the launch of the ill-fated Rover 800. He joked about the standard of workmanship & mngt, no wonder we lost it all.