The Lancair Tigress was an American

homebuilt 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 ...

that was designed by Lance Neibauer and intended for production by Lancair of Redmond, Oregon. Introduced in mid-late 1990s, it was essentially a

Lancair IV The Lancair IV and IV-P are a family of four-seat, low-wing, retractable-gear, composite monoplanes powered by a 550 cubic inch Continental TSIO-550 twin-turbocharged piston engine.Vandermeullen, Richard: ''2011 Kit Aircraft Buyer's Guide'', K ...

with a much more powerful engine. When the engine was cancelled just as it was entering production, the Tigress project ended with it. Only prototypes were produced.Purdy, Don: ''AeroCrafter - Homebuilt Aircraft Sourcebook, Fifth Edition'', page 190. BAI Communications, 15 July 1998. The concept of a higher-powered Lancair IV derivative was finally filled by the Lancair Propjet.

Design and development

The Tigress was intended to be a development of the

adapted to employ the

Orenda OE600 The Orenda OE600 was a 600 hp-class liquid-cooled 8-cylinder V engine, V-block aircraft engine intended to re-introduce piston power to aircraft normally powered by the famous Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 turboprop. The piston engine offers m ...

V-8 engine, giving it a cruise speed of . To accept the higher power and the increased speeds the airframe was structurally strengthened. The engine was later cancelled by its manufacturer, Orenda Aerospace, and the Tigress kit was not produced as a result. The aircraft featured a cantilever low-wing, a four-seat

pressurized {{Wiktionary Pressurization or pressurisation is the application of pressure in a given situation or environment. Industrial Industrial equipment is often maintained at pressures above or below atmospheric. Atmospheric This is the process by ...

cabin, 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. The Tigress was made from composites, including

graphite fiber Carbon fibers or carbon fibres (alternatively CF, graphite fiber or graphite fibre) are fibers about in diameter and composed mostly of carbon atoms. Carbon fibers have several advantages: high stiffness, high tensile strength, high stren ...

. Its span was shorter than that used on the Lancair IV, mounted flaps and had a wing area of . The Tigress's wing used a McWilliams RXM5-217 airfoil at the wing root, transitioning to a NACA 64-212 at the wing tip, the same as employed on the Lancair IV. The aircraft had a typical empty weight of and a gross weight of , giving a useful load of . With full fuel of the payload for pilot, passengers and baggage was .

Operational history

The sole prototype was deregistered on 27 June 2013 and sold, with the tail number (N750L) reserved through 2018. It is preserved on a concrete pad in front of the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute building at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

Design and development

Operational history

Specifications (Tigress)

References

Further reading