One airframe with both single & twin-engine versions

birdus

birdus

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Jay Williams
What airplane has both single and twin-engine versions? It's a light plane, like a Bonanza or something. Or maybe I've dreamed this up.
 
birdus said:
What airplane has both single and twin-engine versions? It's a light plane, like a Bonanza or something. Or maybe I've dreamed this up.
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The Bonanza and the twin Bonanza.

The Navion and the Twin Navion

The Arrow and Seminole

All of these share a Fuselage

(In addition to the Comanche and the Twin Comanche)

Edit: some of my pairings are incorrect, keep reading
 
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Lance/Saratoga/Cherokee 6 and the Seneca, or at least they are very similar fuselage.

Also the Bonanza and the Baron. The twin Bonanza is a different beast, closer to a King Air than a Bonanza.
 
MarkH said:
The Bonanza and the twin Bonanza.

The Navion and the Twin Navion

The Arrow and Seminole

All of these share a Fuselage

(In addition to the Comanche and the Twin Comanche)
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The Bonanza and Twin Bonanza share little or no parts. You're probably thinking of the Bonanza and Baron.

All the twin Navions were conversions.
 
mondtster said:
The Bonanza and Twin Bonanza share little or no parts. You're probably thinking of the Bonanza and Baron.

All the twin Navions were conversions.
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You are right on that one, the Baron was the single Bo fuse.
 
midwestpa24 said:
Lance/Saratoga/Cherokee 6 and the Seneca, or at least they are very similar fuselage.

Also the Bonanza and the Baron. The twin Bonanza is a different beast, closer to a King Air than a Bonanza.
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I could've sworn my mechanic was working on a twin a couple years ago and he had told me it was developed from a single engine version, but he couldn't remember what it was. I pestered him with some of the info from this post, and he did say Lance & Seneca, and you verified it. Phew!

Thanks for all the ideas, everyone! Mystery solved!
 
Trivia: The Aerostar was originally designed to be a complete line of airplanes, from a light four-seat single to a jet. Here's a mockup of the light single.

70C5409B-5826-4ADF-8B8D-DCADEA14F134.jpeg

And from the sublime to the ridiculous ... at one time Piper was messing with sketches of a proposed twin-engine Tomahawk!
 
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Pilawt said:
Trivia: The Aerostar was originally designed to be a complete line of airplanes, from a light four-seat single to a jet. Here's a mockup of the light single.

View attachment 122613

And from the sublime to the ridiculous ... at one time Piper was messing with sketches of a proposed twin-engine Tomahawk!
Click to expand...

The Aerostar is awesome. I had one for a few years and loved the plane. But it has some very interesting concepts which have never really been applied to other planes. The three tail feathers are the same exact part. The elevators on each tail feather are the same part number, they are just flipped over. The majority of the cabin body uses the same parts all the way through it....

Ted Smith has a major focus on reducing the number of unique parts in the plane. Which was supposed to make it easier to build, and to manage the logistics. I am curious if anyone has done any analysis on if this actually helped/hurt or mattered.

Tim
 
Van Johnston said:
Grumman Tiger and Cougar.
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Totally different airframes.

Similar construction techniques. The Cougar was much larger inside. The Cougar was designed to start as a light twin trainer, but to be developed up to a 2x 250 HP, 6 place aircraft.

It was killed as the whole line was sold to Gulfstream, but they only wanted the jets.
 
Pilawt said:
Trivia: The Aerostar was originally designed to be a complete line of airplanes, from a light four-seat single to a jet. Here's a mockup of the light single.

View attachment 122613

And from the sublime to the ridiculous ... at one time Piper was messing with sketches of a proposed twin-engine Tomahawk!
Click to expand...
Someone stuck a tpe-331 on the nose of one... Speedstar 8501759914.jpg
 
There was a rare Bonanza twin (not the Twin Bonanza)


@mondtster is correct. All the Twin Navions are conversions from singles. Early designs were just done on a one page "approved data" on a 337. The story is that this led to the development of the STC process (though I've got no proof of that). The real ones did get done on one of two type certificates.

Since the standard Navion vertical stabilizer and rudder wasn't sufficient to counter the engine out asymmetry, the original (which became the Riley) design used an extra horizontal stabilizer mounted vertically. The later CamAir design used a whole new tail which looks like the single Navion tail just scaled up larger. That and the bigger CamAir engines are the give away as to which you are looking at. Other than the design of the wing engine mounts/nacells and sealing up the front where the single engine was, there's not much modification (other than adding a quadrant throttle).
 
The Eurocopter AS350 Écureuil (or Squirrel), now Airbus Helicopters H125, is a single-engine light utility helicopteroriginally designed and manufactured in France by Aérospatiale and Eurocopter(now Airbus Helicopters). In North America, the AS350 is marketed as the AStar. The AS355 Ecureuil 2 is a twin-engine variant, marketed in North America as the TwinStar. 1700696318149.jpeg
 
Piper J3 Cub:
Twin-Cub-landing.jpg


Ercoupe:
SiameseErcoup_NoseFirst.jpg
 
tspear said:
The Aerostar is awesome. I had one for a few years and loved the plane. But it has some very interesting concepts which have never really been applied to other planes. The three tail feathers are the same exact part. The elevators on each tail feather are the same part number, they are just flipped over. The majority of the cabin body uses the same parts all the way through it....

Ted Smith has a major focus on reducing the number of unique parts in the plane. Which was supposed to make it easier to build, and to manage the logistics. I am curious if anyone has done any analysis on if this actually helped/hurt or mattered.

Tim
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The Mooney tail is the same way.
 
T2 Buckeye. A’s were single, B/C multi.
 
Champ and Lancer. I think the single performs better than the twin, even with one engine inoperative.
 
IMG_7252.jpegIMG_7251.jpegIMG_7250.png

The Piper PA-32-3M was basically a PA-32 Cherokee based prototype modified as a trimotor aircraft with two 115-hp Lycoming O-235 engines fitted to the wings, for development of the PA-34 Seneca. This prototype significantly helped many other development projects at Piper
 
1700844471170.png

Technically a 3 engine airplane. As that is a CJ-610 turbojet.
 
DA40 and DA-42
DA-50 and DA-62
 
How about a twin-engine and a triple-engine? Islander and Trislander?
 
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