Messieurs !
The Bleriot XI b replica is a replica of the original machine in Luzern Transportation Museum/Suisse.
It was bought in 1914 and had to do recce flights on the Suisse border.
Puritan as Switzerland sometimes is it had to soldier on in 1940 again on recce missions.
This was the first aeroplane Switzerland bought for their airforce.
The small prop is for petrol pumping power, the wings may be bent by muscle power; a man showed it to some visitors and
without airstream it didn't need a body builder to bend the wings.
The replica was built within 9200 working hours at Thun /Suisse and I think it is/was airworthy and about 14 years old.
It is situated at Dübendorf airfield in the FliegerFlab Museum (Aeroplane/Air defence Museum) of the Swiss Airforce.
Dübendorf is close to Zürich and famous for some emergency landings of German high tech aircraft in WW2 such as Bf 110
night fighter radar equipped and Me 262 (she is now at Munich, Deutsches Museum).
I sent Des a lot of further photos - be on tenterhooks !there are more machines lurking...
Grüezi und bizz bald, Gunther
photodata: ISO 320-640; lenses: 21 / 24 / 50 mm ; f stop 4.0 on most frames ; available light toujours; 1/90-1/125 sec; RAW/DNG format; Lightroom 4.2 - only minor adjustments; e-mail file type: JPEG 100%;
