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Chief designer Pierre Mignet, eldest son of Henri, the inventor of the Flying Flea, founded Mignet Aviation in 1982. The culmination of the Flying Flea design came in 1996 with their introduction of this model, the HM.1100 “Cordouan”, named for a famous French lighthouse. Like the previous HM.1000 “Balerit”, and unlike earlier Flying Fleas, the […]

The Flying Flea series of airplanes was designed by Henri Mignet, a French designer/builder, in 1934 and was one of the first home-built airplanes. In retrospect, his earlier designs were not deemed as safe as the later designs. Problems ranged from perceived balance problems to poor build quality. Evolution of the design led to the

Henri Mignet had been approached by the French Resistance in 1944 with a set of criteria for a small military plane. He was only able to complete a prototype, designated the HM.280 “Pou Maquis”. Plans for the HM.280 were never released. After the war, Mignet did publish the plans for a civilian version of the

Colonel Albert Eon, head of the French resistance in Brittany, approached Henri Mignet in 1944 with a set of criteria for a small military plane. Devastated by his wife’s death during the design phase, Mignet was only able to complete the prototype, designated the HM.280 “Pou Maquis” (maquis was the name given to French Resistance

Weight- and space-saving was the goal of Henri Mignet when designing the HM.16, itself a derivative of the earlier HM.14. At only 10 feet, 10 inches long, its short fuselage and its nose-high position give the impression that its wings are positioned at too great an angle of incidence (the angle of the wing relative

French radio engineer Henri Mignet set out in the early 1930s to design a plane that was not only easy and safe to fly, but one that could be built at home with basic skills. In November of 1934, Mignet published Le Sport de l’Air which included all the dimensions, plans, and tools needed for

In 1928, Henri Mignet wrote a series of articles in the French aviation magazine Les Ailes (“Wings” in English) about the development of his new plane, the HM.8 Avionette. He described how, with little money and limited know-how, the average person could build an airplane themselves. By 1929, the first homebuilt HM.8s had made their