__NOTOC__ The Piper PA-8 Skycycle was a 1940s

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single-seat light aircraft designed 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 centur ...

at their Lock Haven, Pennsylvania plant. Towards the end of 1944 Piper announced a number of aircraft it intended to build after the war. One of these was the PWA-8 (Post War Airplane 8). An aerodynamic test aircraft was built with the name Cub Cycle and it first flew on 27 August 1944 with a small two–cylinder Franklin engine. The Franklin engine was replaced by a four–cylinder Continental A-40-3 of ; the aircraft first flew with the Continental engine on 12 September 1944. The Skycycle was a fabric-covered mid-wing single-engined single-seat monoplane with a tailwheel landing gear. The fuselage was produced using an auxiliary belly fuel tank as used on the F4U Corsair. The Cub Cycle was scrapped and a similar but new aircraft was built with the name Skycycle, which first flew on 29 January 1945 using the same Continental engine as the Cub Cycle. The aircraft was further modified in 1945 with a four-cylinder Lycoming O-145-A2 engine and designated the PA-8 Skycycle. No further examples were built. A replica of the PA-8 Skycycle, the Carlson Skycycle, was built in 1995 by Ernst W. Carlson and produced by Carlson Aircraft of

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. Carlson intended to sell the aircraft in kit form, but no orders were forthcoming and the prototype was donated to the

Piper Aviation Museum The Piper Aviation Museum is an aviation museum at the William T. Piper Memorial Airport in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. It is focused on the history of the Piper Aircraft Corporation. History Originally founded in the 1980s as a part of the Lock ...

, since the original PA-8 was no longer in existence.Purdy, Don: ''AeroCrafter - Homebuilt Aircraft Sourcebook'', p. 138. BAI Communications. Downey, Julia: ''2002 Kit Aircraft Directory'', Kitplanes, Volume 18, Number 12, December 2001, p. 30. Kitplanes Acquisition Company. ISSN 0891-1851

Specifications (PA-8)

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * {{Piper 1940s United States civil utility aircraft PA-08 Abandoned civil aircraft projects of the United States Single-engined tractor aircraft Low-wing aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1945

Specifications (PA-8)

See also

References