The de Havilland Gipsy Minor or Gipsy Junior is a British four-cylinder, air-cooled, inline
engine
An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy.
Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power gen ...
that was used primarily in the
de Havilland Moth Minor
The de Havilland DH.94 Moth Minor was a 1930s British two-seat tourer/trainer aircraft built by de Havilland at Hatfield Aerodrome, England. With the start of the second world war production of the Moth Minor was moved to de Havilland Austral ...
monoplane, both products being developed in the late 1930s.
Design and development
The engine was a simplified and smaller version of the earlier
de Havilland Gipsy
The de Havilland Gipsy is a British air-cooled four-cylinder in-line aircraft engine designed by Frank Halford in 1927 to replace the ADC Cirrus in the de Havilland DH.60 Moth light biplane. Initially developed as an upright 5 litre (300 ...
. It featured only one
magneto
A magneto is an electrical generator that uses permanent magnets to produce periodic pulses of alternating current. Unlike a dynamo, a magneto does not contain a commutator to produce direct current. It is categorized as a form of alternator, ...
where dual ignition was normal for the Gipsy series of engines. A total of 171 engines were produced, including 100 built in Australia, production moving to that country due to the start of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
[Lumsden 2003, p.136.]
Applications
*
De Havilland Moth Minor
The de Havilland DH.94 Moth Minor was a 1930s British two-seat tourer/trainer aircraft built by de Havilland at Hatfield Aerodrome, England. With the start of the second world war production of the Moth Minor was moved to de Havilland Austral ...
*
Short Scion
The Short S.16 Scion and Scion II were 1930s British two-engine, cantilever monoplanes built by Short Brothers and (under licence) by Pobjoy Airmotors and Aircraft Ltd. in Rochester, Kent between 1933 and 1937. Altogether 22 Scion/Scion II a ...
*
Druine Turbi __NOTOC__
The Druine D.5 Turbi was a light aircraft designed in France in the 1950s for home building. It was a low-wing cantilever monoplane with fixed tailskid undercarriage. The pilot and a single passenger sat in tandem, open cockpits. Essenti ...
Engines on display
*A de Havilland Gipsy Minor engine is on public display at the
de Havilland Aircraft Heritage Centre
The de Havilland Aircraft Museum, formerly the de Havilland Aircraft Heritage Centre, is a volunteer-run aviation museum in London Colney, Hertfordshire, England. The collection is built around the definitive prototype and restoration shops fo ...
,
London Colney
London Colney () is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Hertfordshire, England. It is located to the north of London, close to Junction 22 of the M25 motorway.
It is near St Albans and part of the City and District of St Al ...
,
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...
.
Specifications (Gipsy Minor)
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
* Lumsden, Alec. ''British Piston Engines and their Aircraft''. Marlborough, Wiltshire: Airlife Publishing, 2003. .
{{DHaeroengines
Air-cooled aircraft piston engines
Gipsy Minor
1930s aircraft piston engines
Inverted aircraft piston engines