The Piper PA-15 Vagabond and PA-17 Vagabond are both two-seat, high-wing,

conventional gear Conventional landing gear, or tailwheel-type landing gear, is an aircraft undercarriage consisting of two main wheels forward of the center of gravity and a small wheel or skid to support the tail.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms ...

light aircraft that were designed for personal use and for

flight training Flight training is a course of study used when learning to pilot an aircraft. The overall purpose of primary and intermediate flight training is the acquisition and honing of basic airmanship skills. Flight training can be conducted under a st ...

and built by

Piper Aircraft Piper Aircraft, Inc. is a manufacturer of general aviation aircraft, located at the Vero Beach Regional Airport in Vero Beach, Florida, United States and owned since 2009 by the Government of Brunei. Throughout much of the mid-to-late 20th centu ...

starting in 1948.Montgomery, MR and Gerald Foster,: ''A Field Guide to Airplanes - Second Edition'', page 72. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992.

Development

The PA-15 was the first post-

World War II 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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Piper aircraft design. It utilized much of the same production tooling that created the famous Piper Cub, as well as many of the Cub structural components (tail surfaces, landing gear, most of the wing parts). The Vagabond has a wing that is one bay shorter ( versus ) than that on the Cub, which led to the unofficial term describing the type: ''Short-wing Piper''. This allowed the aircraft to be built with minimal material, design and development costs, and is credited with saving Piper Aircraft from bankruptcy after the war. The prototype PA-15 made its first flight on 3 November 1947, with deliveries of production aircraft beginning in January 1948.''Archive'' 1993 No. 4, p. 93 Vagabonds used a new fuselage with side-by-side seating for two instead of the Cub's

tandem 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 ...

seating. The PA-17 Vagabond version features dual controls, enabling it to be used for pilot training. It has a bungee cord shock-absorbed landing gear (solid gear on the PA-15), and a Continental A-65 engine. The Vagabond was followed by the Piper PA-16 Clipper, which is essentially a Vagabond with a longer fuselage, Lycoming O-235 engine of , extra wing fuel tank, and four seats, the Pacer, Tri-Pacer and Colt, which are all variations of the Vagabond design and thus all Shortwing Pipers.

Operational history

In March 2018 there were still 167 PA-15s and 101 PA-17s registered in the USA. There were 13 PA-15s and 12 PA-17s registered in Canada in March 2018.

Variants

;PA-15 Vagabond :Side-by-side two-seater powered by one 65hp Lycoming O-145 engine.Bridgman 1948, p. 311c. 387 built, plus one converted from a PA-17.''Archive'' 1994 No. 3, p. 74. ;PA-17 Vagabond :Also known as the Vagabond Trainer a variant of the PA-15 with dual-controls, shock-cord suspension and powered by one 65hp Continental A-65-8 engine. 214 built.

Specifications (PA-15)

References

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External links