Development
The Lakes Water Bird was built for 1911 E.W. Wakefield, of the Lakes Flying School, Windermere by A.V. Roe, who would build aircraft to the designs of individual customers. It was built as a landplane with the intention of converting it to a seaplane once testing was complete. Wakefield had been interested in water-borne aircraft since 1909 and had performed experiments with different float designs towed at speed across Lake Windermere. Unsticking problems persisted until he visited Henri Fabre in France and got useful advice on float design. The 12 ft (3.66 m) long float for the Water Bird followed Glen Curtiss' three-step float and was built by boat builders Borwick of Bowness-on-Windermere using mahogany reinforced with metal strips and canvas covered by local.
Avro built the aircraft in Manchester, transporting it to Brooklands for its first flight on 19 May 1911. It was a two-bay seat pusher biplane with wings of unequal span. The outer half of each upper wing carried a pair of ailerons; the larger inner one had a semicircular trailing edge extending well behind the wing trailing edge. Bamboo outriggers fore and aft of the wings supported leading elevators and tail surfaces plus rudder. Both elevator and rudder were operated by bamboo pushrods. Power was provided by a 50 hp (37 kW) Gnome 7-cylinder rotary engine driving an 8 ft 6in (2.59 m) propeller.
After testing as a landplane at Brooklands in May 1911, the Water Bird was brought to the Hill of Oaks on Windermere and the float fitted in place of the wheeled undercarriage. A pair of cylindrical floats was mounted below the wing-tips for lateral stability on the water. The successful first flight was on 25 November 1911, with ex-Avro school pilot H. Stanley Adams.
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