Avro 581 Avian

The Avro 581 Avian was a two-seat British biplane and the one-off prototype of the Avian light aeroplane family. Avro built it in 1926 around a fuselage left over from its autogiro programme with Juan de la Cierva, and entered it in the Daily Mail light aeroplane trials at Lympne that September. Roy Chadwick chose the 70 hp Armstrong Siddeley Genet engine for its light weight, and the aircraft had folding wings with ailerons on the lower wings only. Flown by Avro chief test pilot Bert Hinkler, it impressed at Lympne but retired with a fault, and he then won a prize with it at another meeting. It was rebuilt as the 581A with a shorter span, a longer nose and an 85 hp ADC Cirrus II engine. Hinkler bought it, flew it nonstop from Croydon to Riga in August 1927, and as the 581E with Avian 594C wings flew it from Croydon to Darwin, setting off on 7 February 1928 and covering about 17,711 km in 15 days. It was retired in January 1930 and is displayed in a museum in Brisbane.