The Grumman Tiger

[Music] foreign [Music] foreign tiger take her up for a flight have a look around it and go into a little bit of detail about it hi this is Mark from skywagon University today we're going to look at the Grumman tiger this is a 1993 it's one of the last ones built there was a there was a gap in production where they ended in 1979 and then a new company was formed and they've rebuilt the tiger and they built 181 of them and this is one of those 181 a little bit of our irony in that number just as trivia 181 pa28181 is the Archer which is its direct competition but we'll go over some of the performance numbers and its specifications and have a little bit of a look around it so this is the big brother this is the biggest of the range there was a traveler the cheetah and the tiger and the Tigers the 180 horse The Traveler was much smaller engines two-seat trainer and the cheetah was like a tiger with us 160 horse in it the Tigers have 180 horsepower Lycoming in them the main thing about their design that's so different from everything else is they're not a single rivet in view anywhere on the plane I mean if you look at the wing it's dead smooth cowlings boot cows fuselage tail everything is not a single rivet and what they do is it's all metal and it has ribs you can see them actually under the Skins but it's a bonded sort of laminate of aluminum with a honeycombed um honey a honeycomb delicious Center like a crunchy it's a honeycombed mesh in between that makes it very very strong so it's there's no rivets therefore no drag so for what this is being 180 horsepower and a fixed prop and a fixed gear kind of like a paper Archer type of category plant it's fast so they do like 130 knots they do 182 speeds four seats nine gallons an hour and the dimensions are it's 22 feet long which is short relatively to a lot of general aviation planes and 30 feet wide which is also narrow relative to a lot of General elevation planes a lot of Cessna is a 35 36 feet the Moon is 36 feet so this is narrower and shorter so there's a lot therefore is less drag there too so let's start at the front and we'll pop the lid and have a look at the engine so to pop the cowl on this I don't need to whip out my handy multi-tool and undo a whole load of screws and fasteners and edit through it I just press here and here and it releases it and two pins come out of two holes and it opens and there's a little Rod up here which pops into a like a button like on a jacket and holds it up and there it is open very conventional it's a a 360 cubic inch four-cylinder Lycoming 180 horsepower fixed pitch would be exactly what's under the front of a paper Archer for example Archer oil filter oil cooler very very normal under the hood and very easy to do a pre-flight on you just open the side pop the hood open the Bonnet remove the cowling whichever language you speak and then to close it we just pull the bar back off here watch that and then guide the two pins inside just guide the two pins back into these holes and then click and when they're flush it's closed if one of them's like that it isn't closed so it just clicks into place same on the other side they both open very accessible I mean they started making these in 1969 the the whole airframe design in the Little Traveler but the cowling was the whole top would come off so you don't need to remove the prop to take that off this comes off easily this splits very easily so they've had a lot of years to design in some nice features to it especially as this is the last year they were made so steering it a piper would have two rods and Rudder pedals and a steerable nose wheel and you can help it with a bit of break this has a free cast ring it's a it's a steel bar going down into the front of the nose Pan and the nose wheel then Trails behind that and it's totally unsteerable it just free casters so the steering is all differential braking I mean if I were to push on this wing it'll just rotate around to 90 degrees that's as far as it goes and it will literally swivel in its own space so it's actually very very handy on the ground and a little bit difficult to push backwards with a tow bar but you'll get used to it and it just becomes normal but that's a nice feature for maneuverability on the ground in a run-up area you can just turn uh the main wheels are they're the same sizes on a Cherokee they're like seven six hundreds and a 500 nose wheel and the main gear legs are fiberglass they're just fiberglass rigid gear legs with fairings on them no shock strats no olios no rubber discs no anything so it's like very good trainer so you don't have to maintain that sort of mechanical gear because it's all just like fixed parts so getting in and out doors it has no doors it has a canopy I'm over the other side of the plane just for camera angle so you can get up both sides onto the wing walk area which is reinforced and you open the canopy by just turning this handle and sliding it back that's that's fully open and then to get in obviously you just step in and lift up the seat cushions down on the base step down into the plane so it's very easy front and back and out both sides it's got a little bit of a lip to step over and you just sort of get used to getting in and out of it like this but we'll have a close-up of the cockpit an interior and all the details in here soon when we get ready to fly it I just wanted to show you how how easy how accessible it is and also there's a position about here on the rail where you can actually fly it with it open it says 112 knots Max with canopy open to here no flight with canopy Beyond this point so you could fly it like that keep all your maps and things held down because it's a bit windy but you can fly it like that and obviously when you're taxing it around on a hot sunny day open a little bit like an RV so on the tail remember it's shorter it's only 22 feet long the tail is eight feet tall the Tigers this later version of the Tiger has a taller rudder or tigers have taller ratters too this the horizontal stabilizer is wider on a tiger too and it's very conventional it's fixed horizontal large elevator with a very effective trim tab and we're going to be flying it later so it's it's like a paper it's sort of linked to the motion of the elevator so pretty conventional and again no rivets anywhere on it very smooth so baggage and gross weights and useful loads the the gross weight gross takeoff weight in a tiger is 2400 pounds and its empty weight is 1500 pounds so the useful load is 900 pounds and of that 900 300 is used up by the 52 gallons of gas Tigers carry 52 cheetahs carry 37 so 52 gallons of gas 900 pound used for load very even with its competition very similar to you know other planes of its tape the baggage door here is on the left and it's short because it's got to clear this canopy when it's open 120 pounds in there fairly sizable you know it's a definitely a four-seat luggage kind of plane um and it's obviously on the left not on the right like on a Cherokee okay so to start it I've got the radios on already and I normally don't do that when I start the engine but the radios are on so that the microphone works I'm just gonna I'm gonna start it with the radios on so mixture Rich crack the throttle it's already run once so fuel pump on and clear foreign we've got oil pressure okay good everything's very light on the controls a tiny bit of right break and I'm swiveling it around in its own space and you don't really need to get used to not having a steerable nose wheel it feels steerable with differential braking especially in a tail Dragon there's a lot of differential braking and if anybody's watching this for the first time this isn't a road it's a taxiway access or it's a road but it's taxiway access and it's on the airport so I'm just we use it for um making the video so it's not cluttered in the background with hangers and other planes and things I like this throttle quadrant in these later tigers it feels like throttle proper mixture but it's actually possible traffic Cutlass 90785 Bravo departing Runway 2-3 to the West Placerville it's actually throttle mixture and then what looks like profits carb Heat that Cutlass that just took off to Cessna 172 180 horsepower retractable cutlers this plane is faster than it and it's retractable we actually should do a video on a Cutler so we haven't had one yet so here we are in the run-up area very conventional run-up so it's just going to be cigar controls whoops hang on a minute here comes a RV and I'm using the whole area move it over here we'll run it up out of the way see how that turned out of the way so quickly okay so cigars controls instruments gas attitude run up goals instruments that's slaves had already been the right place gas most of the two tanks left and right no both it's left or right attitude run up so just the normal fixed pitch pipe Runner which would be 1700 RPM check the mags left both [Applause] right both just going to lean it see if it's rich [Applause] I guess I'm gonna go about halfway back all the lean our beat you're dropping the RPM [Applause] and then idle your traffic eight two Sierra Tango departing Runway two three right across the departure I got the time stuck in my head Tiger Tiger Burning Bright in the forest of the night Okay so drones flying we're ready to go fuel pump on Tech final Grumman 1197 Zulu departing Runway 2-3 a local flight Placerville thirdly smoothly to full power air speeds coming alive as we're flying everything is nice and laying out big obvious fuel gauges trim right in the middle excellent visibility all around I mean just me and half tanks and here we are climbing out of that watch I'll do there's a thousand feet a minute coming up doing 18. absolutely perfect day to fly possible tiger Zulu I'm on left Crossman for 2-3 at Placerville very light very very light it makes you kind of want to race it around don't like this it's six feet narrower than the moon and it has more aileron travel on shorter wings so it's very very responsive and light nice to fly Rancho Miranda traffic Warrior 785 from throttle back to 2400 RPM Central already at Penn altitude way above it actually um trip there it is look at that absolutely great should have made more than 181 of these little tidbit of info since the camera's pointing around the mountains there's 130 of normal snowfall up there this year but I think the drag's probably over because that's going to drain down until the reservoirs all summer and just retarding the front a little bit passenville 97 Zulu is on a high left base for two three miles perhaps during 18. uh Skyhawk two zero three one it's Crossing midfield for a left downwind to 3-4 Willows Rancho married a traffic Warrior 785 left space 2-2 Rancho turn those guys down Placerville Knights of zulu is on a long final for two three or four stops possible they're Landing it it's just like landing at Cherokee 180 or similar type of plane Ranch around up here at cinema really light feel very light feeling pitch and rolls so it's not like you've got one heavier one knot is the whole thing is incredibly well balanced I can see why people like these so much this plane has had a massive amount of Interest a moment I advertised it passed away all the Tigers on short final full stop and plasma we're doing 75 traffic off the brakes and just gently flare oh wow you don't get that on camera often that was a nice one Bentley pullback and break a little here we are the high-speed exit of Placerville is a third of the way down the four thousand foot Runway so without excessive braking or working very hard that just landed very nicely in that again and then flaps up they go down by holding them but they go up all the way on their own laps fully up switch to neutral and then if this was the summer and it was 105 degrees bam air conditioner on fact you're having a sports car arm over the side so getting out of a tiger hold on here hold on here not on here stand up one foot over the side and away and if you don't want to go right over the side you just stand on the seat base under the cushion so special thanks to Dale Dalton Dale owns this plan and has for a very long time and he's selling it now reluctantly but um he's very kindly said to make a video of it and we appreciate that very much thanks Dale um and this is Mark at skywagons University having just had a quick flight around and look around a 1993 Grumman tiger [Music]

Channel: Skywagon University

Views: 62,110

Keywords:

Id: UyvCQI6hrKQ

Length: 19min 21sec (1161 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023