Holcomb Perigee

The Holcomb Perigee was a prototype sportsplane built in the United States in 1987 by Jerry Holcomb. Originally known as the Ultra-IMP, it was a refinement of the Aerocar Micro-IMP and attempted to overcome the major shortcoming of that design – a lack of power – by replacing the adapted automobile engine that had been used in its predecessor with an engine designed to power ultralights.

Development and design

In 1972, Moulton Taylor, designer of the Aerocar flying car and the Coot home-built flying boat, began work on a new two-seat Pusher configuration light aircraft intended for easy homebuilding, the Aerocar IMP, but delays in obtaining the intended engine resulted in priority being switched to a smaller, single-seat derivative, the Aerocar Mini-IMP, which was successfully flying by early 1976, with plans available for sale later that year.Template:Sfn In 1978, Taylor began work on the Micro-IMP, a derivative of the Mini-IMP built using Taylor Paper Glass (TPG), a fibreglass-reinforced paper, consisting of a paper core with metal inlays covered with glassfibre in a matrix of polyester resin and covered with Dacron fabric.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The Micro-IMP first flew in 1981, but while the novel construction material proved to be a success, the aircraft, with an engine from a Citroen 2CV car, originally generating and later uprated to , was underpowered.Template:Sfn

Work began on a new single-seat home-built design of TPG construction, the Ultra-IMP, in December 1983,Template:Sfn but the programme was taken over by Jerry Holcomb in 1984, after Taylor suffered a stroke,Template:Sfn and renamed the Holcomb Perigee.Template:Sfn

The Perigee is a shoulder-wing pusher monoplane, with the strut braced wings having an aluminium alloy and TPG mainspar, a spruce and TPG rear spar, and wooden ribs. The wings could be removed for easy storage and transport. The streamlined semi-monocoque fuselage had spruce longerons, but was otherwise of largely TPG construction, and housed an enclosed cockpit for the pilot. The aircraft had a fixed tailwheel landing gear and a Y-shaped tail, with the tailwheel attached to the ventral fin. The prototype Perigee is powered by a Cuyuna 430{{#tag:ref|Cuyuna was one of the most important builders of engines for ultralight aircraft at the time.Template:Sfn two-stroke engine located immediately behind the cockpit driving a two-bladed ground-adjustable propeller via a long propshaft.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Rotax engines were proposed for amateur builders.Template:Sfn

Holcomb began construction of the prototype began in February 1984,Template:Sfn and it made its first flight in 4 April 1987.Template:Sfn A total of 22 sets of plans had been sold by February 1988.Template:Sfn

See also

Related development

• IMP
• Mini-IMP
• Micro-IMP