Avia BH-6 & BH-8

BH-6

The Avia BH-6 was a prototype fighter aircraft built in Czechoslovakia in 1923.

It was a single-bay biplane of unusual configuration, developed in tandem with the BH-7, which shared its fuselage and tail design.

The BH-6 had wings of unequal span, but unusually, the top wing was the shorter of the two, and while it was braced to the bottom wing with a single I-strut on either side, these sloped inwards from bottom to top.

Finally, the top wing was attached to the fuselage not by a set of cabane struts, but by a single large pylon.

The BH-6 crashed early in its test program, and when the related BH-7 did also, both implementations of this design were abandoned.

BH-8

The Avia BH-8 was a prototype fighter aircraft built in Czechoslovakia in 1923.

It was an unequal-span biplane developed on the basis of the ill-fated BH-6 design, in an attempt to address that type’s problems.

It shared the BH-6’s unusual wing cellule design.

When test flown in late 1923, it did indeed display better flying characteristics than its predecessor, but was overtaken in development by another variation of the same design, the BH-17.

Specifications

Crew

One

Length

6.47 m (21 ft 3 in)

Wingspan

9.98 m (32 ft 9 in)

Height

2.88 m (9 ft 5 in)

Wing area

22.6 m2 (243 sq ft)

Empty weight

878 kg (1,936 lb)

Gross weight

1,180 kg (2,601 lb)

Powerplant

1 × Skoda license built Hispano-Suiza 8Fb,

224 kW (300 hp)

Performance

Maximum speed

220 km/h (137 mph, 119 kn)

Endurance

2 hours

Service ceiling

7,000 m (23,000 ft)

Armament

2 × fixed forward firing .303 Vickers machine guns.

 

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