Top speed 220 km/h Length 8.07 m | Wingspan 12 m First flight October 1961 | |
The MMPL Kanpur was an Indian light four-seat aircraft, designed for service and agricultural work in the early 1960s. It is a rare example of an aircraft designed and built by a national air force for its own use.
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Design and development
The Kanpur I was designed by an Indian Air Vice-Marshal and built in 132 days at the Indian Air Force Maintenance Command Development Centre at their Kanpur air base. A more powerful version, the Kanpur II, was intended for production as a military general-purpose and army observation machine, though serious consideration was also given to an agricultural role. For this, the prototype Kanpur I was fitted with spray bars. The Kanpur I dates from about 1960 and the Kanpur II first flew in October 1961.
The four-seat Kanpur was a conventional single-engine, braced high-wing monoplane with a fixed conventional undercarriage. It had a steel structure, mostly fabric-covered. The constant chord wings were built around two spars and with 1° 26' of dihedral. They were braced on each side with a pair of V-struts from the two spars to the lower fuselage longerons. Metal-skinned split flaps and fixed leading edge slots were fitted.
The fully glazed cabin was under the wing, with the four occupants in two rows of side-by-side seats. The Kanpur pilot had standard blind flying instrumentation and a STR-9X radio. The air-cooled engine, a flat four in the Kanpur I and a flat six in the Kanpur II, drove a two-blade propeller. The Kanpur's main wheels were mounted on cantilever, faired legs attached to the lower fuselage through liquid shock absorbers. There was a small tailwheel at the extreme tail, where the tailplane was placed on the upper fuselage. The elevator had a cut-out for the rounded rudder which extended to the keel, hung on a fin smoothly merged into the upper fuselage.
Variants
Kanpur I: Prototype, with a four-cylinder, 190 hp (140 kW) Lycoming air-cooled horizontally opposed engine.
Kanpur II: Intended for production with a six-cylinder, 250 hp (190 kW) Lycoming air-cooled horizontally opposed engine. It was 250 mm (9.8 in) longer, a little heavier on take-off and had a maximum speed 39 km/h (24 mph) greater.
Specifications (Kanpur II)
Data from Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1962/3
General characteristics
Performance