The Lancair Barracuda is an American

amateur-built aircraft Homebuilt aircraft, also known as amateur-built aircraft or kit planes, are constructed by persons for whom this is not a professional activity. These aircraft may be constructed from "scratch", from plans, or from assembly kits.Armstrong, Kenn ...

produced by

Lancair Lancair International, Inc. (pronounced ''"lance-air"'') is a U.S. manufacturer of general aviation aircraft kits. They are well known for their series of high-performance single-engine aircraft that offer cruise speeds that surpass many tw ...

Uvalde, Texas Uvalde is a city and the county seat of Uvalde County, Texas, United States. The population was 15,217 at the 2020 census. Uvalde is located in the Texas Hill Country, west of downtown San Antonio and east of the Mexico–United States bord ...

. It was introduced at

AirVenture EAA AirVenture Oshkosh (formerly the EAA Annual Convention and Fly-In), or just Oshkosh, is an annual air show and gathering of aviation enthusiasts held each summer at Wittman Regional Airport and adjacent Pioneer Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, ...

in July 2018. The aircraft is supplied as a kit for amateur construction. The design is a development of the

Lancair Legacy The Lancair Legacy, a modernized version of the Lancair 320, is a low-wing two-place retractable-gear composite monoplane, manufactured by the American company Lancair. It is available as a kit that cost US$71,500 in 2011.Vandermeullen, R ...

, employing a one-piece wing with greater span.

Design and development

The Barracuda was designed to provide more speed, with simplified kit construction over earlier models. The aircraft features a cantilever

low-wing A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing confi ...

, a two-seats-in-

side-by-side configuration Tandem, or in tandem, is an arrangement in which a team of machines, animals or people are lined up one behind another, all facing in the same direction. The original use of the term in English was in ''tandem harness'', which is used for two ...

enclosed cockpit under a

bubble canopy A bubble canopy is an aircraft canopy constructed without bracing, for the purpose of providing a wider unobstructed field of view to the pilot, often providing 360° all-round visibility. The designs of bubble canopies can drastically vary; so ...

, partially or optionally fully retractable

tricycle landing gear Tricycle gear is a type of aircraft undercarriage, or ''landing gear'', arranged in a tricycle fashion. The tricycle arrangement has a single nose wheel in the front, and two or more main wheels slightly aft of the center of gravity. Tricycle g ...

and a single engine in

tractor configuration In aviation, the term tractor configuration refers to an aircraft constructed in the standard configuration with its engine mounted with the propeller in front of it so that the aircraft is "pulled" through the air. Oppositely, the pusher c ...

. The aircraft is made from

composite material A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...

, including

e-glass Glass fiber ( or glass fibre) is a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass. Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of glass fiber was only made possible with the inventio ...

carbon fiber Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (American English), carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (Commonwealth English), carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics, carbon-fiber reinforced-thermoplastic (CFRP, CRP, CFRTP), also known as carbon fiber, carbon compo ...

with a

Nomex Nomex is a flame-resistant meta-aramid material developed in the early 1960s by DuPont and first marketed in 1967. Properties Nomex and related aramid polymers are related to nylon, but have aromatic backbones, and hence are more rigid and mo ...

honeycomb core. Its span wing has a double taper planform and mounts

Fowler flaps A flap is a high-lift device used to reduce the stalling speed of an aircraft wing at a given weight. Flaps are usually mounted on the wing trailing edges of a fixed-wing aircraft. Flaps are used to reduce the take-off distance and the landing ...

. The standard engine used is the

Lycoming IO-390 The Lycoming IO-390 engine is a horizontally opposed, four-cylinder aircraft engine, manufactured by Lycoming Engines. There is no carburetted version of the engine, which would have been designated O-390 and therefore the base model is the ...

, with the

Continental IO-550-N The Continental IO-550 engine is a large family of 9 liter fuel injected six-cylinder, horizontally opposed, air-cooled aircraft engines that were developed for use in light aircraft by Teledyne Continental Motors. The first IO-550 was delive ...

powerplant optional. The cockpit is wide and high and the roll rate is 150 degrees per second. The kit includes the

airframe The mechanical structure of an aircraft is known as the airframe. This structure is typically considered to include the fuselage, undercarriage, empennage and wings, and excludes the propulsion system. Airframe design is a field of aerospa ...

, engine, propeller and the

avionics Avionics (a blend word, blend of ''aviation'' and ''electronics'') are the Electronics, electronic systems used on aircraft. Avionic systems include communications, Air navigation, navigation, the display and management of multiple systems, ...

, usually the Garmin G3X Touch

glass cockpit A glass cockpit is an aircraft cockpit that features electronic (digital) flight instrument displays, typically large LCD screens, rather than the traditional style of analog dials and gauges. While a traditional cockpit relies on numerous mech ...

flight display and GTN-750

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

airband Airband or aircraft band is the name for a group of frequencies in the VHF radio spectrum allocated to radio communication in civil aviation, sometimes also referred to as ''VHF'', or phonetically as ''"Victor"''. Different sections of the ban ...

VHF radio, multifunction display. The kit purchase price includes Lancair's basic two-week ''Builder Assistance'' program.

Operational history

The first customer-completed Barracuda was displayed at

Sun 'n Fun Sun ’n Fun Aerospace Expo (officially styled SUN 'n FUN) is a nonprofit organization in Lakeland, Florida dedicated to the promotion of aviation education. It is best known for the annual week-long fly-in and airshow at Lakeland Linder Intern ...

, in April 2019.

Specifications (Barracuda)

References

External links

* {{Lancair aircraft

Lancair aircraft Lancair International, Inc. (pronounced ''"lance-air"'') is a U.S. manufacturer of general aviation aircraft kits. They are well known for their series of high-performance single-engine aircraft that offer cruise speeds that surpass many tw ...

2010s United States sport aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Low-wing aircraft Homebuilt aircraft Aircraft first flown in 2018