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The Farman F.120 and its derivatives were a family of multi-engine airliners and bombers of the 1920s built by the Farman Aviation Works in France.
The Jabiru, which was named after a Latin American stork, was a fixed-undercarriage sesquiplane powered by either two, three or four engines, depending on the variant. It featured and unusually broad chord, low aspect-ratio main wing and a very deep fuselage. The tri-motor variant had the centerline engine mounted high, giving it an unusual appearance.
The F.121 or F.3X was the first version to fly, with four 180 hp Hispano-Suiza 8Ac V8 engines mounted in tandem push-pull pairs mounted on stub wings, however this caused cooling problems for the rear engines and the F.120/F.4X version followed shortly afterwards, powered by three 300 hp Salmson Az.9 radial engines. Development continued and a single F.122, modified from an F.4X, was powered by two 400 hp Lorraine 12Db engines. Two military versions were also built, the F.123 with two 450 hp Hispano-Suiza 12Hb V12s, or F.124 with two 420 hp Gnome et Rhône 9Ad Jupiter radial engines.
Despite being most commonly seen in lists of ugliest aircraft, following its first flight in 1923 it won a French airliner competition, the 1923 Grand Prix des Avions de Transports and its 500,000 francs first prize, before seeing service with several European airlines. The Jabiru was capable of carrying up to 9 passengers, and served on Farman airline's route Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam, but also with Danish Air Lines between Copenhagen and Amsterdam. They served until the late 1920s.
The F.170 Jabiru was a single-engine evolution of the 1923 F.3X/F.121. In the early 1920s, there was a strong prejudice in favour of single-engine airliners. Since even multi-engine aircraft could not keep flying in the likely event that an engine went out, it was considered that a single engine offered just as much security and a greater ease of maintenance.
The F.170 could carry up to 8 passengers and was an ungainly sesquiplane with a rectangular upper wing of constant profile. Its construction was of traditional wood and fabric. Since the aircraft was quite low on its wheels, it was often derisively called the ventre-à-terre (belly to the ground). The first flight took place in 1925.
The improved F.170bis, introduced in 1927, incorporated some metal construction and could carry 9 passengers. The F.171bis was joined by the one and only F.171.
The F.170 and F.170bis were used exclusively by the Farman airlines (Société Générale de Transport Aérien) from May 1926 and used on the Paris-Cologne-Berlin route. When the SGTA was incorporated in the newly created Air France airline on 7 October 1933, some five F.170 were still being used.
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