Design and Development
The Canard was, even by the standards of 1910, a curiously regressive design, its layout reminiscent of Alberto Santos-Dumont's 14-bis of 1906.
As first flown at Issy-les-Moulineaux by Maurice Colliex, the aircraft had an uncovered fuselage of wire-braced wood construction with the 50 hp (37 kW) Rossel-Peugeot rotary engine at the rear and the front-mounted control surfaces consisting of an all-moving elevator divided into two halves, one either side of the fuselage, a rectangular balanced rudder mounted above the elevator, and a pair of short-span fixed horizontal surfaces with a high angle of attack mounted behind and below the elevators. Voisins characteristic side-curtains were fitted to the outermost pair of interplane struts and roll control was achieved using split trailing-edge ailerons on the outer two bays of both upper and lower wings.
The aircraft was judged a success and Voisin manufactured a number of examples. There are variations between the individual production aircraft. The number of sets of side curtains varies, some aircraft having two or even three sets.
Read more about this topic: Voisin Canard
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