Robin DR 400
The cranked-wing, wood-and-fabric classic with range, speed and fuel efficiency that makes light of the smallest strips. By Nick Bloom.
In France, A DR 400 series Robin baking quietly on the airfield grass is a sight as familiar as bread carried underarm and women kissing each other on both cheeks.
The factory has been churning out these cranked-wing wooden wonders since the early seventies, so you might be looking at a twenty-year-old with several thousand hours in its logbook. There is something about an aged F-registered Robin. Its faded paint, scuffed seats, and the haze of fine cracks in the perspex and on the engine cowl are reminders that this workhorse gave hundreds of French youngsters their first hop in a light aircraft, taught them to fly, and enabled them proudly to carry aloft their friends and families.
In France, the Robin is a young person’s aeroplane, because it’s the one you learn in. In this country, private owners of the cranked-wing Robin are more likely to be middle-aged. They don’t dwell much on the aeroplane’s French origins, nor are they necessarily prejudiced in favour of wood-and-fabric (although they’ll remind you that a wooden airframe transmits less engine noise).
They’ll tell you that what distinguishes them is their discernment. A DR 400 series Robin is considerably more expensive than the equivalent Piper or Cessna, but performs better and is perhaps more attractive. Their analogy is a sporty, luxury saloon with some classic appeal, as against a family model—an MGB of the air.
British gliding clubs use Robins as tugs because of their performance, and also their unequalled visibility in a turn.
Avions Robin (see ‘Robin becomes Apex’ panel) switched to metal construction decades ago and produces a series of fine training, touring and aerobatic machines (see the July 2001 Pilot flight test of the R2160i). In the UK, sales of these straight-wing, metal aircraft greatly outnumber cranked-wing, wooden ones. Despite this, perhaps because so many used Robins are wooden ones, the Robin remains the DR 400. The factory continues to supply them. Although they aren’t priced particularly competitively, there seems no shortage of takers.
Beginnings
PIERRE ROBIN WAS born in 1927. As a teenager he used to watch German military aeroplanes taking off and landing at the airfield at Tours, then the intensive Allied attempts at bombing bridges in the area. This is said to have begun his love of aircraft.
The Robin family was not well off and Pierre became a jobbing carpenter like his father. Fortunately, the post-war socialist government was so generous in its attempts to rebuild the aviation industry that even sons of carpenters could learn to fly. This was generally in war-surplus Piper Cubs, gifts from the departing Americans. As Pierre’s father frowned on such frivolous pursuits, Pierre kept his flying lessons secret until an excited friend telephoned to tell the family that their son was in the air on his first solo.
Pierre became chief instructor at Blois, using his woodworking skills to repair aeroplanes. He married a printer’s daughter.
The couple moved to Dijon where Pierre was again chief instructor. At Dijon, he didn’t just repair aeroplanes during the winter, he made them, turning out one two-seat Jodel a year. Pierre became a close friend of Delemontez, who lived nearby.