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| All airplanes embody compromise. Trade simplicity for speed; send off climb performance for payload; or sacrifice fuel economy for a roomy cabin. Among the difficulties faced by aircraft designers is the careful balancing of these qualities. Worse yet is the task given to the engineer hired to improve an existing, certified design; he doesn't have the luxury of making radical changes. His design box is impossibly small. So it is that Grumman Tiger | owners owe Roy LoPresti a debt of gratitude for tweaking this design into one of the most successful compomises around. It's a simple airplane, powered by a 180-horsepower Lycoming O-360 driving a fixed-pitch prop. It drags along fixed tricycle gear and rides on an easy-to-build constant-chord wing. Its systems are stone simple. And yet the airplane is capable of transporting four adults in an admirably comfortable cabin at nearly 140 knots true |
WITH CLAWS STILL SHARP • Marc E. Cook • Photography by Mike Fizer • AOPA PILOT • MAY 1999
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