page_title: Lilian Bland
section_title: Aviation career
hierarchical_section_title: Lilian Bland / Aviation career
caption_attribution_description: English: Side view of Bland Mayfly, 1910
context_page_description: Lilian Bland was an Anglo-Irish journalist and pioneer aviator who, in 1910–11, became one of the first women in the British Isles, and maybe even in the world, to design, build, and fly an aircraft – the Bland Mayfly.
context_section_description: Bland's uncle Robert sent her a postcard of the Blériot monoplane from Paris, inspiring her to take up flying. She studied the measurements of the monoplane during the first official aviation meeting held in Blackpool in 1909, and added her own thoughts into the design of her plane, the Mayfly. The Mayfly had similar wings to Blériot's design, but it could get off the ground by itself. At that point, no one in Ireland had yet made a powered flight – the first would be Harry Ferguson, in December – and to make an aircraft would involve building it herself. Her late uncle, General William James Smythe, an astronomer and member of the Royal Society, provided a house with a workshop. After some background reading on the Wright brothers, and becoming inspired by their achievements, Bland successfully built a flyable model biplane with a wing span of six feet.
  From this, she progressed to a full-scale glider with others' help, which was built from spruce, bamboo and canvas, and completed early in 1910. For months of experiments, she made numerous glider flights to improve the plane. The finished glider had a wingspan of 20 feet and 7 inches, and weighed 200 pounds. Due to the doubts that were expressed to her about its flying capability, Bland, with deliberate irony, named it Mayfly. The resulting Mayfly was tested by gliding it from Carnmoney Hill, being progressively strengthened and tested with heavier loads, until Bland felt it was strong enough to take an engine. The load test was done by four Irish constables. Since the plane could lift four men, Bland believed it could carry one English engine. She ordered a light 20 horsepower two-stroke engine from A. V. Roe & Co. for £100, and after some delays brought it to Carnmoney in July.
  The horizontally opposed two-cylinder engine achieved 20 horsepower at 1000 rpm. Bland was eager to test the engine-powered aircraft before its petrol tank was ready, so she improvised: an empty whisky bottle was used instead, with Bland's deaf aunt's ear trumpet as the engine hose. This construction was not quite a success—the engine's vibrations compromised the security of the plane's nuts, bolts, and struts, and Bland's flight would have to wait.
  Preparations of the Mayfly started in 1909, and the first successful flight was made at Randalstown in late August in 1910, a short hop off the ground. While perching on a canvas open-air seat, she manipulated controls to maintain the flight in balance after running forward about 30 feet and stayed in the air for a quarter of a mile. The controls consisted of a bicycle handle bar. Not only did this make Bland the first woman to fly an aircraft in Ireland, but the Mayfly also became the first powered biplane in Ireland. In 2017, Sinead Morrisey recounts one of Bland's flights in her poem The Mayfly.
  She continued experimenting with further flights, mostly around thirty feet (ten meters) in length, sometimes requiring examination of the ground to identify when the Mayfly had actually lifted off. The longest flight after the first try was approximately one quarter of a mile (400 meters). She began to plan an improved version, and offered biplanes for sale at £250 apiece without an engine and gliders for £80 to fund further development. The Mayfly was able to stably glide over 90 yards and rise 30 feet even in gusty winds, according to Bland's words. The aircraft was however not capable of much more, and would not cope with a larger engine. Finally, Bland gave the Mayfly air-frame to a boy's gliding club and sold the engine. After that, she moved to northern Vancouver Island with her husband.
caption: The Mayfly was an aircraft designed and constructed by Lilian Bland in 1910
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