Monday 18 May 2009

Some More Nieuport Niews

Following my previous post on Nieuports in New Zealand, I contacted Ian Sowman of Napier who built this Circa Reproductions Nieuport 11 ZK-WWI, which I think completes the Nieuport replicas in New Zealand. Thanks to Ian for the photo. As you can see, this Nieuport is different from the others as it is wearing a German colour scheme. This is because it is actually a replica of a Siemens-Schuckert D 1b, which was a German copy of a captured Nieuport. The original D 1b differed from the Nieuport in having the top wing set around 100mm lower, and having strengthened centre struts. The original also featured a Siemens-Halske 7 cylinder rotary engine that drove the propellor in the opposite direction of rotation through a gearbox that eliminated torque reaction. Ian's aircraft is powered by a Rotax 503. The colour scheme is modelled after a scheme worn by a similar replica in the USA that is part of the Kansas City Dawn Patrol (but that is another story).

And due to some factual inexactitudes in my previous post, I post the following corrections:
This is ZK-NIE (1)

This is ZK-JOZ


And this is ZK-NIE (2)
Thanks to Flyernzl for sorting this out.



2 comments:

  1. Hi There
    I am researching Graham Lee Nieuports for a possible first build. Do you know where I can get the contact details of any of these Nieuport builders?
    Cheers
    David

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi,

    try this:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nieuport_Builders/

    or:

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WW1_Nieuport_Biplanes/

    ReplyDelete