RF1

The RF1 was the aircraft René Fournier had been imagining since the 1940s, though it took him until 1960 to build it. His only formal training was a year at an aviation mechanics school in Rochefort, followed by a few thousand hours of his own study and workshop time. He wanted, in his own words, something closer to a soaring bird than a powered aeroplane — long, fine wings and a formula that needed as little engine as possible.

Construction began in the workshop of a wheelwright he knew, who must have found the thin wooden ribs and glued joints an odd departure from cart wheels. Fournier then moved to Cannes to finish the aircraft, which first flew on 30 May 1960 in the hands of test pilot Charles Fauvel.

Power came from a Volkswagen-derived flat-four of 1130cc and 27hp, turning a wooden propeller. Fournier's low-drag airframe made the most of it: a cruise of around 150km/h on 8 litres an hour, or as little as 3.5 litres an hour at a gentle 90km/h. The RF1 won its class at an amateur-aircraft rally in Nogaro in August 1960, and was damaged in a landing accident at a Dijon air display the following June, flown by Bernard Chauvreau — who would go on to fly test and delivery flights for Fournier's aircraft for the next thirty years.