The Kreider-Reisner Challenger (later the Fairchild KR series) is an American utility biplane aircraft designed and produced by the Kreider-Reisner Aircraft Company , which was later taken over by the Fairchild Aircraft Company .
6-486: The Kreider-Reisner Aircraft Company was an American flying service and aircraft manufacturer from 1923 to 1929. The Kreider-Reisner Aircraft Company was formed at Hagerstown, Maryland in 1923 as a sub-contractor. By September 1925 the company was operating a general flying service and incorporated. In 1926 it designed and built the first aircraft the Midget lightplane. The aircraft performed well in aviation competitions so
12-570: The C-1 was progressively modified. The Challenger was a conventional mixed-construction biplane with a fixed tailskid landing gear . It had two open tandem cockpits for a pilot (at the rear), and passenger (forward) and was powered initially by a 90 hp (67 kW) Curtiss OX-5 inline engine . A number of variants were built as the C-3 Challenger and C-4 Challenger which had detail differences and different engines fitted. Late in 1928
18-505: The aircraft in a Fairchild KR series. Kreider remained president, but died on 13 April 1929 in a mid-air collision. Reisner left the company shortly afterward. By 1931, Fairchild had relocated its headquarters to the Hagerstown site. In 1935, the name of the company was changed to Fairchild Aircraft Corporation . Fairchild KR-34 The Challenger C-1 was possibly developed from the similar Waco 10 . A poorly documented aircraft,
24-949: The company introduced a new and slightly smaller design as the C-6 Challenger . In 1929 the company was absorbed by the Fairchild Aircraft Company who continued the production of the C-4 as the Fairchild KR-34 and the C-6 as the Fairchild KR-21 . Although not built by Fairchild the C-2 was redesignated the Fairchild KR-31 . To act as an engine testbed one KR-21 was modified to use a Fairchild 6-390 engine (later named Ranger ) and changes were made to
30-550: The company then designed a two-seat utility biplane. It had decided it was cheaper to design and build an aircraft for use in its own flying services and the resulting aircraft was the C-2 Challenger . A smaller version was designed and built in 1928 as the C-6 Challenger . On 1 April 1929 the company was bought by the Fairchild Aircraft Company who continued production at Hagerstown and redesignated
36-784: The wing and landing gear geometry. The modified aircraft was known as the Fairchild KR-125 . In 1931 a similar aircraft without the geometry changes but with a Ranger engine was sold under the designation KR-135 . In 1930, the KR-34CA, a military version of the Fairchild KR-34 based on the Kreider-Reisner C-4C Challenger design, was built in Farmingdale, New York . A light attack craft, it had two .30 caliber Browning machine guns mounted on
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