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Bowers Fly Baby

Bowers Fly Baby
Bowers Fly Baby PH-BRR in flight.jpg
Role Sport and personal aircraft
Manufacturer homebuilt aircraft
Designer Peter M. Bowers
First flight 1962
Produced 1962-today
Number built more than 500
Unit cost
US$10,000 in 2007
Variants Duane's Hangar Ultrababy

The Bowers Fly Baby is a homebuilt, single-seat, open-cockpit, wood and fabric low-wing monoplane that was designed by famed United States aircraft designer and Boeing historian, Peter M. Bowers.

The prototype Fly Baby first flew in 1962. It is now on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Variants include a biplane version called the Bowers Bi-Baby or Fly Baby 1-B and several dual cockpit designs by various builders. Bowers also designed a side-by-side two-seat version he called Namu, but few examples have been built.

The Fly Baby was the winner of the Experimental Aircraft Association's 1962 design competition.

Over 500 Fly Babies have been completed to date, with scores still flying worldwide and an active network of builders and owners. It is built from plans and was designed to be constructed in a garage using only basic hand tools, by a person of average "home handyman" skill in 1962. The plans consist of over one hundred pages of typewritten instructions and dimensioned drawings. After Bowers' death in 2003 the plans were unavailable for a time, but starting in 2007 they were back on the market, sold by the Bowers family.

The Fly Baby was designed to be a very simple aircraft. For example, the fuel gauge is a stiff wire attached to a float poking up through the gas cap (a common application in the 1930s and 1940s, as seen on Piper and Aeronca light aircraft). The structure is of aircraft-grade spruce and plywood (Bowers did not advocate skimping on the quality of structural wood), covered with doped aircraft fabric. Aileron controls are push-tube, elevator controls are a combination of push-tube and cable, the rudder is cable-controlled.


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