The All‐Metal Blackburn “Bluebird” Mark IV: Design, Care and Maintenance of a “Sociable” British Light Aeroplane with Side‐by‐Side Seating

THE experience gained with the previous models of the “Bluebird” type has enabled the Bluebird IV to be produced embodying all the requirements essential in a light aeroplane for private and club flying. This experience indicated that the policy of side‐by‐side seating in preference to the more usual tandem arrangement was fully justified, and, although previously it had been considered that such an arrangement was necessarily detrimental to performance owing to the wider fuselage, a considerable amount of investigation proved that a fuselage could be designed maintaining the requisite width, but of such a “body form” as to make this loss of performance practically non‐existent. As a result of these investigations it was decided to develop the “Bluebird” both acrodynamically and structurally, and the actual product by its flight tests confirms the theoretical and model investigation, the side‐by‐side Bluebird IV having a performance at least equal to the performance of the best tandem light aeroplane of the same class and the same engine.