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The Grumman Cheetah was a well-liked four-place tourer that could also double as a trainer. Production sadly ceased during the late seventies when the line was taken over by Gulfstream Aerospace. At the 30th June, 1988 there were still 21 AA-1 and 69 AA-5 aircraft on the Australian register
From The Cockpit – Grumman American AA Series
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Grumman American’s ‘Aa’ Series
The Chief Structural Engineer at Piper at the time once indicated to me that Piper had worked on more than its fair share of ‘potato heads’ – a reference to models that emerged as extensions to existing ones, reflections perhaps on the extent to which the Company exploited the popular Cherokee range.
With Grumman’s sortie into the light end of general aviation aircraft design and manufacture, the Bethany based corporation took on board in the American Aviation design, one which was entirely different from anything on the Big Three’s lists. As they emerged the ‘AA’ series became a moderate success and while Grumman and then Gulfstream have outlived the AA production lines, the aeroplanes themselves have continued in widespread service throughout the world on a variety of tasks, most notably training and low cost personal transportation.
Jim Bede can be described as a daring designer in the vein of Burt Rutan who he followed. Bede’s classic design with more than a modicum of uniqueness about it was the BD5 – a one seat homebuilt pusher, little more than a microlight but well before that form became a marketed genre. The 805 was fitted with a Microturbo turbojet, becoming the BD5J Microjet. Few are the pilots privileged in their time to fly the J. Clearly a fascination which has stayed with the designer, who has recently designed a supersonic homebuilt (reportedly yet to fly). Before all this Bede was involved with putting pencil to paper on the C150/Cherokee theme.
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