Built by the Kishore brothers in 1911, this unique domestic creation is worthy of flying once again.
Despite its shortcomings, the Blériot XI was one of the great designs of the early years of aviation. The successful fruit of many prior efforts and failures by the French pioneer aviator Louis Blériot, it was difficult and even dangerous to fly, primarily because its horizontal stabilizer had a wing-like airfoil, which could cause the nose to suddenly pitch down during a high-speed dive. However, when Blériot piloted a shoulder-wing monoplane on an historic 23½-mile jump across the English Channel in July 1909, he earned his design a stamp of worldwide acceptance beyond its inherent merits. Since then, aviators looking to score more firsts in distance, speed, altitude or endurance or simply to experience the thrill of early flight for themselves wanted the Blériot XI. In addition to the examples built by Blériot, several other companies on both sides of the Atlantic built it under license, while other emerging aviators built their own aircraft based on its basic layout. It was in that last category that the VanDersel brothers staked their modest claim to fame.
Little is now known about Jules “JJ” VanDersel and his younger brother, Frank, except that they lived just outside Denver, Colo.; His mother worked as a housewife; And they barely made it to grade school. But both brothers proved to have innate mechanical talents that made them skilled in machining, carpentry and other skills. Given this, it is not surprising that these youth, like many others of the time, became fascinated with aviation. JJ experimented with gliders at the age of 12, and later, a few months after Blériot’s 1909 Channel flight, he and Frank became more ambitious. After obtaining all the publications and photographs, he used those references to build his own Blériot XI in 1911… then learned to fly it.
According to Javier Arango, director of The Airplane Collection in Paso Robles, California, which now owns the VanDersel Blériot, the brothers “must have received some guidance and a lot of information,” as the dimensions of their airplane are close to the original. However, his homebuilt differs from the standard Blériot XI in three respects. First and foremost, instead of the 25-hp Anzani 3-cylinder radial or Gnome rotary engine that normally powered the Blériots, the Vandersels, using their common sense and machining skills, adapted a 4-cylinder inline air-cooled automobile engine for aerial use with a reworked oil system. Just what that engine was remains uncertain, although Arango said it was “close in size” to the power plant used in the Metz, a car equipped with a liquid-cooled engine that the company planned to adapt for aviation but which was never completed.
The second difference, Arango said, was that “some of the structure around the empennage is laid out a little differently than on most Blériots.” Finally, he said, “The French Blériots were built with high quality, but our plane was built by teenagers in Colorado who just wanted to fly – it’s a little tougher than the antique Blériots.”
Nevertheless, the handmade airplane worked remarkably well. “There’s a photo of the first flight, which ended in a landing and the landing gear broke,” Arango said. “But it was repaired and flew again. Both brothers flew it.”
The VanderSels flew Curtiss JN-4 Jennies and Standards, and in the 1920s, Arango said, “Frank started an airport and barnstorming operation.” Most notable, however, is that Frank kept the house in which he and JJ first learned to fly. Arango commented, “I’m so glad they kept it.” “This breed of airplane is quite rare. The Smithsonian Institution has only one such aircraft.”
Frank VanDersel attempted to restore Blériot in the 1960s, but he died before the project was completed. Following JJ VanDersel’s death in Raton, NM in November 1977, the monoplane was put on display at the Museum of New Mexico. In 1994 it was purchased by Joseph Gertler, who loaned it to Dowling College in Bayport, NY, where it was restored by John Zell, Frankie Mineo, Russ Moore, and the Bayport Aerodrome Society. Then in 2009, CC Air Corporation of Arango purchased it and added it to The Airplane Collection, with the ultimate goal of making it suitable for flight for the first time in a century.
“The plane was in very poor condition when we found it,” Arango said. “It was extremely authentic.” This meant that it served as a useful reference towards the inevitable replacement of defective materials and components. “Chuck Wentworth of Antique Aero, who is really the main character in the restoration project, inspected it and saw everything,” he said. “The entire fuselage was in good condition. There were broken wires and turnbuckles that had to be rewired and replaced to get it back to original condition. Chuck had to find parts of 1911 vintage to get the right look based on plans and photographs. For example, he stuck a fake control wheel in the cockpit for display. We took all that out.
“The wings were tricky – they were not the same age as the fuselage. They were probably damaged and were repaired or rebuilt by the VanDersels. A lot of work had to be done with the wings to make them airworthy. The cotton covering was difficult to work with, and we also had to find the ‘honey-coloured coating’ described by the VanDersels. We used a varnish that was tinted to get the right honey colour.”
Although he considered acquiring an unknown engine, Arango decided to heed the advice of the National Air and Space Museum and “keep it as it was” by rebuilding the original engine. Fortunately for the restoration team, VanDersarls “left good data on the cylinders, the copper cooling fins – all the specifications needed to build the engine from scratch. The engine was put together with the help of old publications and photographs of the originals.” The hardest part was obtaining the period components, but they managed to obtain a 1905 Bosch magneto, a brass carburetor of 1909 vintage, a tachometer, a magneto switch, and a 1910 automobile oil gauge. In 2011 Wentworth unveiled the Bleriot at the National Aviation Heritage Invitational in Reno, Nev. On 18 September it won the event’s top award, the Rolls-Royce Aviation Heritage Trophy.
Once the four-year project was complete, Arango and his team went through a systematic process toward getting it approved for flight by the Federal Aviation Administration. This presented some challenges, Arango said, because the Blériot XI predated the Civil Aeronautics Administration, let alone the FAA, and “there is no certificate of age and no paperwork to make it current.” However, after the FAA inspected the aircraft, it finally registered the VanDersel Blériot as an experimental airplane on August 16, 2012. This meant it could be flown under certain restrictions, such as not carrying passengers for hire and with limits on the number of flights and the travel radius around the airfield. “This was fine for us,” Arango said, “because we were happy flying more or less in a straight line.”
Even with FAA approval, the VanDersel Blériot underwent testing, re-inspection, and taxi testing before flying for the first time in more than a century on November 3, 2012. Since then, Arango has placed its flight itinerary in Paso Robles under strict self-imposed restrictions. “It’s a frontier airplane,” he explained, “with a 50-hp engine and very high wings that cause a lot of drag. It’s a good flying airplane, but I’m not going to risk the airframe. It’s a one-of-a-kind airplane, touched twice by its creators and touched once by Chuck. I wanted it to be authentic to its type.”
Originally published in the March 2014 issue aviation historyTo subscribe, click here,
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