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drauk
6th Feb 2003, 18:35
I want to buy an AA5-B (Tiger) and have two questions.

After some reasonably extensive web searches and looking in the back of the various UK GA magazines I've only been able to find a couple for sale. Does anybody know of any other sources or specifically of one for sale? It occurs to me that a good place to look is the various club noticeboards - has anybody seen anything on their local one?

Secondly, delamination can be an issue with these planes (1976-79 models). Is an engineer's report (virtually) guaranteed to detect this? Does a current and valid CofA offer any assurance about it? i.e. would a check be made for it during a CofA inspection and even if it does can the onset of it be sudden such that a 6 month old CofA doesn't help?

MLS-12D
6th Feb 2003, 20:31
I guess that you know of this one, but just in case:
http://www.cabair.com/salespdfs/g-davo-pic.pdf

Yankee
6th Feb 2003, 20:45
Good Tigers don’t hang about long, hence the lack of adverts for them. Best years to stay away from the Purple Passion Glue is to go for a 1977-79 model. Having said that it is recognised that after 20 odd years if a plane had a tendency to delaminate it would have done so by now. There is a simple repair for dealing with delamination using flush riveting. The CAA have a repetitive delamination AD inspection to be carried out every 150hrs and takes about 1 ½ hrs to do a whole plane. It is a very easy to inspect a aircraft to see if it has the purple glue as long as you take it to a Grumman experienced engineer.

The best place to get a full answer to your question on Glue or for that matter any other Grumman related query is to go to the Grumman Gang Achieve site www.grumman.net/archieve/ and do a search for Purple Glue, you will get all the replies for similar question over the last 5 years. I have looked and you should find the answer to what you want, too many to repeat here.

If you are serious about owning a Tiger I would highly recommend that you join the Grumman Owners Club (AYA) www.aya.org who are a valuable source of information on all things relating to this type of Aircraft.

As past regional director for Europe of the AYA and part owner of a 1976 Tiger with blue glue, please drop me a line and I will give you my contact details for an in-depth answer to your questions.

Vizsla
7th Feb 2003, 12:21
I owned a Tiger for a number of years, it was the first import demo a/c in Europe S/n 007
It did delaminate, once when airbourne, and fuel was streaming from port wing....interesting Pan and full emergency landing..
Apart from that the riviting worked and we gradually did the trailing edge on both wings - Just check out the tank sealing before you go to far and need to remove a panel.
Great A/c relieable & tough, I had some exciting times, including taking it below the Equater on a two week trip from UK

foghorn
9th Feb 2003, 09:37
There's a 1/6th share in a 1979 Tiger going at Biggin Hill - private message me if you're interested.

big pistons forever
11th Feb 2003, 03:19
I own a AA1B, a great little airplane. I am also a AYA member and heartly recommend joining this association, it has a wealth of good technical and operational info. They also have a list of experienced instructors available for checkouts. Grummans do not fly like Cessna's and Pipers, so it is important to get an instructor with time on type.

Grummaniser
11th Feb 2003, 13:10
Yankee meant to say "http://www.grumman.net/archive/"

He may not be able to spell but he certainly knows his Grummans;)

comancheman
13th Feb 2003, 07:51
Hi
I have recently been offered an AA5 Cheetah in p/ex against another a/c. The price will be under £20k.

If this is of interest to you please contact me.

The Cheetah was the first a/c that I owned having bought one in 1986 and was used for a variety of uses including short strip flying involving take offs and landings underneath power cables mounted on telegraph poles!

Regards

David