When newly formed Tiger Aircraft announced a few years back that it was going to reintroduce the four-seat AG-5B Tiger, last produced back in 1993, it seemed like a natural. Unlike a number of more forgettable and more obscure airplanes that have been returned to production (sometimes successfully, more often not) since the bust of the mid-1980s, the Tiger makes better sense today than ever.
Indeed, it can be argued that this 30-year old sheet-metal design is the most innovative single going. Cirrus and Lancair may have decided to go with advanced composites for their next-generation airplanes, but way back in the 1960s, the airplanes that begat the Tiger were made with advanced materials, a number of design innovations and weight-saving construction techniques.
And, despite its current luxury trappings, the Tiger is a direct descendent of the simple two-seat airplanes first produced by American Aviation more than 30 years ago. Like those airplanes, the Tiger features rivetless bonded-skin construction, honeycomb materials for stiffness and light weight, a dirt-simple tubular spar, a sliding bubble canopy for great visibility and a simple laminated fiberglass main landing gear and tubular nose gear with steering accomplished via directional braking. Admittedly, all of these things had been done on other airplanes before, but putting them in one package on a certified piston single was groundbreaking stuff back then; it still is.
I've been flying these airplanes for awhile now. In fact, my first family airplane was a Tiger, an early 1990s model manufactured by American General Aircraft Company (AGAC), that I rented on a regular basis. As a new instrument pilot, I made my first forays into the slightly wilder blue in a Tiger. For a couple of years I flew my small family all around the Northeast, and slightly further afield, in that airplane, N911DK, and it proved itself a remarkably comfortable, capable and economical airplane. And with the S-Tec autopilot and an HSI, it was a surprisingly good airplane in which to learn single-pilot IFR.
We learned to love the style of the thing, too. With its sliding bubble canopy, jaunty looks and sprite-like handling, the Tiger was definitely not a new take on the same old thing. It was a unique brand of cat, and its slightly diminutive scale seemed just right for us.
The Tiger, first built as the AA-5B, wasn't the first four-seater in the family; the AA-5A Traveler, which later became known as the Cheetah, was. But by the time Grumman purchased the company in the 1970s, it decided an upgrade was in order. The Tiger, with its Lycoming O-360 180-hp engine and fixed-pitch prop, was first certified in 1975, and it was a big hit, not because it was a lot more airplane than the Traveler, but because it felt like less airplane than comparably powered competitors while delivering more. More, in this case, anyway, means more performance with greater simplicity. Despite its modest power, the airplane delivers about 140 knots at cruise, comparable to a couple of contemporary retractable-gear airplanes with similar or greater power. At the same time, the Tiger carries a good useful load, 900 pounds, and a full-fuel load of around 585 pounds, good for three FAA-regulation 170-pound people and 75 pounds of bags. That's about as good as it gets with a four-seater, and it's especially good for a four-seater powered by a 180-hp engine.
