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Ace Baby Ace

homebuilt aircraft design by Orland Corben

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ2997057 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Ace Baby Ace, a single-seat, single-engine, parasol wing, fixed-gear light airplane, was marketed as a homebuilt aircraft when its plans were first offered for sale in 1929 — one of the first homebuilt aircraft plans available in the United States. Plans are still available and Baby Aces are still being built. Orland Corben designed a series of aircraft for the Ace Aircraft Manufacturing Company, the Baby Ace, Junior Ace, and Super Ace. Corben's name was associated with the aircraft, and it is commonly known as the Corben Baby Ace.

Design

Original

The Baby Ace is a single-seat parasol wing monoplane of conventional taildragger configuration. Individual examples have been configured with tricycle landing gear.

The wing uses a Clark Y-cross-section airfoil; spars and ribs are spruce. The steel-tube parallel wings struts simplified internal wing structure, and enabled the wings to fold back for over-the-road towing.

The fuselage is of fabric-covered tubular construction, and wing struts are steel tube. There is a door in the right side.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ace Baby Ace” is homebuilt aircraft design by Orland Corben. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Baby, homebuilt and aircraft, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1929—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Baby, homebuilt and aircraft is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “homebuilt aircraft design by Orland Corben” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2997057. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1929.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ace Baby Ace”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ace Baby Ace primary sources, Ace Baby Ace archive and Baby research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ace Baby Ace”?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ace Baby Ace” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.