Piper PA-15 Vagabond

PA-15 & PA-17 Vagabond
PA-17 Vagabond
Role	Personal and training aircraft
National origin	USA
Manufacturer	Piper Aircraft
First flight	1948 (PA-15)
Introduction	1948 (PA-15) 1949 (PA-17)
Number built	601
Unit cost	$1995 in 1948
Developed from	Piper J-3 Cub

The Piper PA-15 Vagabond and PA-17 Vagabond are both two-seat, high-wing, conventional gear light aircraft that were designed for personal use and for flight training and built by Piper Aircraft starting in 1948.

The PA-15 was the first post-World War II Piper aircraft design. It utilized much of the same production tooling that created the famous Piper Cub, as well as many of the Cub structural components (tail surfaces, landing gear, most of the wing parts). The Vagabond has a wing that is one bay shorter (30 ft (9.1 m) versus 36 ft (11.0 m)) than that on the Cub, which led to the unofficial term describing the type: Short-wing Piper. This allowed the aircraft to be built with minimal material, design and development costs, and is credited with saving Piper Aircraft from bankruptcy after the war.

Vagabonds used a new fuselage with side-by-side seating for two instead of the Cub's tandem seating.

The PA-17 Vagabond version features dual controls, enabling it to be used for pilot training. It has a bungee cord shock-absorbed landing gear (solid gear on the PA-15), and a 65 hp (48 kW) Continental A-65 engine.

The Vagabond was followed by the Piper PA-16 Clipper, which is essentially a Vagabond with a 17 in (43 cm) longer fuselage, Lycoming O-235 engine of 108 hp (81 kW), extra wing fuel tank, and four seats, the Pacer, Tri-Pacer and Colt, which are all variations of the Vagabond design and thus all Shortwing Pipers.

In March 2010 there were still 224 PA-15s and 125 PA-17s registered in the USA.

There were 13 PA-15s and 12 PA-17s registered in Canada in March 2010.

Data from 1978 Aircraft Directory

General characteristics

Performance

Related development:

Comparable aircraft:

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