This is an original Oldfield Super Baby Great Lakes that was built in the 1970s from plans originally laid out by Barney Oldfield in the 1950s. Rated to +/-9G, the Baby Great Lakes is an aerobatic biplane that’s cheap to fly and economical to own.
The Super Baby Great Lakes was designed as a smaller, less expensive version of the Great Lakes, a biplane trainer developed in the 1930s and built in significant numbers – over 250 were made and the design was then put back into production in the 1970s, then again in 2011 by Waco.
Above Video: This is an episode on the Experimental Aircraft Channel that showcases a Super Baby Great Lakes, discusses the history of the model, and of the specific aircraft shown on screen.
The original “Super Baby” Great Lakes was designed as a one-off aircraft, but after it was built and flying the demand for more was so strong that the designer Barney Oldfield created a series of full scale plans for it, allowing ambitious homebuilders to make their own in their shed or garage.
Oldfield’s design was clever in its layout, resulting in a remarkably compact design that stood just 4′ 6″ high. It offers seating for one and a standard staggered width biplane wing design and conventional (taildragger) landing gear.
The fuselage is made from chromoly steel alloy tubing for strength, and the wings from spruce wood spars, the entire structure is then covered in aircraft fabric to help keep the weight down. The final weight can tend to vary depending on the choice of engine, but completed ready-to-fly planes typically weigh in at around 500 lbs or 228 kgs – that’s lighter than many modern motorcycles.
It’s not known exactly how many examples of the Super Baby Great Lakes were built, the name was changed to the simpler “Baby Great Lakes” sans-Super at some point, and the plans currently belong to the Aircraft Spruce & Specialty Co. who will sell you a set for $460, or a kit for $3,360.25 USD.
The example of the design you see here is finished in red and white, it’s said to have been built in the 1970s and it’s powered by a flat-four-cylinder, air-cooled Lycoming engine which has currently been removed.
You can’t really tell that the Super Baby Great Lakes stands just 4′ 6″ tall and weighs about as much as a modern motorcycle at 500 lbs or 228 kgs. Despite its smaller size, it can carry a pilot to a top speed well over 125 mph, and it has a wing loading of +/-9G, making it fully aerobatic capable.
Most recently, this plane was used as a display piece in a car showroom, it hasn’t flown in some years but it does come with both the aircraft logbook, the engine logbook, and the original engine. So an enterprising new owner could get it back in the air with some work.
If you’d like to read more about this unusual biplane you can visit the listing on Historics Auctioneers here. It’s due to roll across the auction block with them on the 11th of May with a price guide starting at just £14,000 or $17,500 USD.
Images courtesy of Historics Auctioneers
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Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
