With the Cessna 337 finished but lockdown continuing its time for a new project. I have a couple of other projects going on in the background but for various reasons they are on pause, I'll detail them in their own blog posts.
I came across this picture on Instagram and thought it was a gorgeous little plane, the LoPresti Fury. A little bit of digging and it turns out it has an interesting story.
Roy LoPresti was an aeronautical engineer, he worked on the Apollo project and became known as Mr. Fast thanks to his work in the General Aviation field. You will have seen his work, he had a hand in the Grumman AA5 and the Mooney 201. The Fury however was not a clean sheet design but an evolution of the Globe Swift which first flew in the 1940s!
LoPresti took up a job at Piper in Vero Beach in the late 80's running LoPresti Engineering and the first project was this substantial upgrade to the Globe Swift including complete redesign of the cowlings, cockpit and wing. One prototype was built and displayed at Sun 'n' Fun in 1989 where LoPresti secured 500 orders with $10,000 deposits. Sadly in 1991, Piper went bust, along with the LoPresti Fury.
The tooling and plans are currently up for sale however if anyone fancies becoming a GA manufacturer!
I think this little aircraft will make a fantastic 3D printed plane.
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