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As shown in Propwash THE AIRCRAFT WAS PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS BARR 6

10.17.05

By Aero-News.net Kevin O’Brien

The Barr 6 is a high-performance composite kit airplane designed to be easy to fly but capable of prodigious load-carrying feats and excellent speeds. It does this through the old-fashioned guarantor of power, cubic inches (the prototype was IO-720 powered).

Despite the thirst of the IO-720 at full power, throttled back to 75% power -- 300 HP -- it burns less fuel than most 300 HP engines do while making rated power. The aircraft is designed to take 400 to 500 HP, and some studies (but nothing firm or final) have been done towards turbine power and pressurization.

While the airplane resembles a Cessna 206 or 207 at a glance, it has a most un-206-like speed. 75% cruise was 206 mph; Vne, 248, and Va, 171. Yet the plane comes over the fence at 70 and touches down at 45.

These numbers were developed by engineers, but most of them were attained during the 210 hours of flight of the prototype, N83W, which was subsequently destroyed in a ground fire. (The cruise at gross weight had only been documented to 190 mph, but Barr believes that there are some aerodynamic improvements possible, for example with the wheel fairings, as all the other engineering specs were proven in flight testing).

The Barr 6 has a roomy, walk-around cabin with a prodigious 2303-lb useful load. It's the light weight of the composite structure that makes it possible, and the composites are made so lightweight, but strong, by internal reinforcements made of bundles of carbon rods -- an innovation designed into the Barr 6 by Charley Rodgers, a former Bell composites engineer.

 

The Barr 6 was covered previously in Aero-News. It has some interesting detail design features, some lifted from Cessna aircraft, some from the Bonanza, and some entirely novel.

 

 

 

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Last modified: August 05, 2008