| Baby | |
|---|---|
 Bert Hinkler's Avro Baby in the Queensland Museum, Brisbane | |
| General information | |
| Type | Sports plane |
| Manufacturer | Avro |
| Designer | |
| Number built | 9 |
| History | |
| First flight | 30 April 1919 |
TheAvro 534 Baby (originally named the "Popular") was a British single-seat light sportingbiplane built shortly after theFirst World War.
The Avro Baby was a single-bay biplane of conventional configuration with a wire-braced wooden structure covered in canvas. It had equal-span, unstaggered wings which each carried two pairs ofailerons. Initially, the aircraft was finless and had arudder of almost circular shape. There were later variations of this. The main undercarriage was a single-axle arrangement and with a tailskid.[1]
The first Babies were powered by a water-cooled inlineGreen C.4 engine of pre-1914 design that had previously been installed in theAvro Type D, though thoroughly remodelled postwar by theGreen Engine Co.[2] It produced 35 hp (26 kW). Most of the later Babies also used this engine design, new-built from original Green drawings byPeter Brotherhood Limited ofPeterborough, though some variants used either a 60 hp (45 kW)ADC Cirrus 1 or an 80 hp (60 kW)Le Rhône. These new-build Greens were about 6 lb (3 kg) lighter.
The prototype first flew on 30 April 1919 from Avro's Hamble airfield. It crashed on the nearby foreshore two minutes into the flight due to pilot error. The second prototype flew successfully on 31 May 1919.[2]
The type 534A Water Baby was afloatplane version with an altered rudder and large fin. The fourth (counting the short-lived prototype) Baby was designated Type 534B, distinguished by itsplywood-covered fuselage and reduced-span lower wing. The Type 534C had both wings clipped for racing in the 1921Aerial Derby. The 534D was a Baby modified for hot climates and was used by a businessman in India. All 534s were Green-engined single-seaters.[3]
The Type 543 Baby was a two-seater with a 2 ft 6 in (76 cm) fuselage extension. It too was initially Green-powered, but in 1926, this was replaced by an 80 hp (60 kW) ADC Cirrus 1 air-cooled upright inline engine.[4]
The final version of the Baby was the type 554 Antarctic Baby, built as photographic aircraft for the 1921–1922Shackleton–Rowett Expedition to Antarctica. This had an 80 hp (60 kW) le Rhone engine, raisedtailplanes, rounded wingtips and tubular steelstruts replacing rigging wires to avoid the problems of tensioning rigging wires with gloved hands. Like the Water Baby, it was a floatplane.[5]
By far the strangest Baby was one modified byH.G. Leigh in 1920.[6] The original wings were removed and instead the aircraft had a short, conventional, shoulder-mounted wing, bearing projecting, full-span ailerons. Above it was a strongly forward-staggered stack of six very narrow-chord wings of about the same span as the lower wing, hence each of very high aspect ratio and therefore with low induced drag. This complicated structure added about 60 lb (30 kg) to the weight. This "Venetian blind" wing design was proposed and previously explored byHoratio Phillips in the last decade of the 19th century.[7]
The Babies were raced in the early 1920s by a variety of pilots but are best remembered for the flights ofG-EACQ in the hands ofBert Hinkler. On 31 May 1920 he made a non-stop flight fromCroydon toTurin in 9 hours 30 minutes – a flight of 655 mi (1,050 km) and celebrated at the time as "the most meritorious flight on record". On 24 July, he won second place in the handicap category of theAerial Derby atHendon, and on 11 April 1921 set a new distance record in Australia when he flew the Baby non-stop from Sydney to his home town ofBundaberg 800 mi (1,288 km) away, making the flight in 8 hours 40 minutes. Hinkler's Baby is preserved at theHinkler Hall of Aviation in Bundaberg.
In June 1922, another Baby made the first flight between London and Moscow when the Russian Gwaiter collected his machine from Hamble and flew it home.
Ernest Shackleton planned to take an Avro Baby 'Antarctic' on hisfinal expedition, but their ship, theQuest, delayed by engine trouble and by-passed Cape Town, to where the Avro had been shipped, after it was found it took up too much space on the ship.
Data fromAvro Aircraft since 1908[8]
General characteristics
Performance
