Oma’s Glider
AZ Models Grunau Baby IIb by Adam Rehorn
S
ome aircraft are so
well-designed and well-
received that they become
legendary. Most people who
have even a casual interest in
aviation immediately recognize
the P-51 Mustang, the C-47/
DC-3, SR-71, and Boeing 747,
among others. However,
there’s one aircraft that truly
belongs with these immortals
that many do NOT know the
name of, the Grunau Baby.
The Grunau Baby (now often
referred to as the Schneider Grunau
Baby) was designed by Schneider,
Hirth and Kromer back in 1931.
Since then, this very successful
glider has been produced in
numerous countries the world over,
and over 6000 have been produced.
Many pilots from many nations
have first gotten their “air legs”
(if you will) on the Baby, and it
has proven to be a favourite with
military and civilian air schools
and glider clubs for 70-plus years.
The name of the glider came
from Grunau, the eastern German
mountain town where Schneider’s
factory was located. This area,
with its many mountains and
thermals, was a perfect place for
gliding, and a natural birthplace
for such an esteemed aircraft.
Given the importance of the
aircraft to the sport of gliding and
the role it has played in getting so
many generations airborne, it is
somewhat surprising that there
hasn’t been an injection moulded
kit of this plane before now. It is
high time that someone finally
made a nice replica of this gracefuland important aircraft, and
thankfully, the folks at AZ Models
have stepped up to the plate.THE BOX
Because the Baby was used in so
many countries at so many times,
it has worn a lot of different colour
schemes. It would be impossible for
AZ to issue a kit with the decals to
cover all the options; heck, even to
cover the most important options
would require a huge number of
liveries. To make matters a bit
simpler (and to sell a few more kits,
likely) AZ actually sells multiple
versions of this kit, each one
coming with markings and painting
guides for 4 different machines.
This also means there are different
boxes for each of these variant sets.
One thing about this kit: the
box is SMALL. This makes sense;
after all, it’s the Grunau BABY, notthe Grunau “Gigantic Plane”. The
box is smaller than most 1/72 WWII
planes, and is only slightly larger
in surface area than the Matchbox
Wellesley. This shows just how well
packed the Wellesley was, I guess!THE KIT
First things first: the title here is
a bit misleading because it should
say “Kits”. Yes, there are actually
two full Babys in the box, as you
get a pair of identical sprues in the
box! And they contain everything
you need to build a complete
plane, except for a windscreen.
The kits in my box were a medium
beige colour, and the fabric
detail is nicely and finely done.
Some Babies had a windscreen,
while others didn’t. The windscreen
was very small; it seems that
back in the day it was thought to
be important for pilots to be ableto feel the wind in their faces.
Indeed, even on the real Baby, the
windscreen is little more than a
curved piece of plastic. To replicate
this, the AZ kit comes with four
windscreens printed onto a thin
acetate sheet. They wisely give you
a few extras in case you mess up.
Sounds like a good plan to me!
The decal sheet is very nice.
In my boxing, it came with
markings for Sweden, Poland,Is this what my great uncle saw? This is as close as I can come to mimicking that photograph in my great aunt’s album. I don’t have someone off-camera
balancing the wing, so the Baby assumes its natural pose of resting on one wingtip. I hope Otto will forgive my misspelling, but the model was done
before I found out it was a “t”, not an “l”.Here you can see the thin black frame around the windscreen. Note that the
tail band goes from the lower edge of the rudder to the bottom of the fin
cap. That’s two layers of decals, and alignment is critical!62 • OCTOBER 2018 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL
KIT REVIEWS
056-65-Reviews-1018.indd 62 14/09/2018 15:23