The Victa Aircruiser was an 1960s Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n four-seat touring monoplane

Monoplane

A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with one main set of wing surfaces, in contrast to a biplane or triplane. Since the late 1930s it has been the most common form for a fixed wing aircraft.-Types of monoplane:...

 designed by Henry Millicer

Henry Millicer

Henry K. Millicer, born Henryk Kazimierz Milicer , was a Polish-Australian aircraft designer and pilot....

 and built by Victa.

Development

Following the success of the earlier Airtourer

AESL Airtourer

-Trivia:*Probably not the 1st 2 seat side by side aircraft designed with a central 'stick' but one of the 1st with a 'square hand grip' version.*Easy to fly from both seats due to the central stick design and arm rest....

, Millicer designed a four-seat version which he called the Aircruiser. The prototype registered

Aircraft registration

An aircraft registration is a unique alphanumeric string that identifies a civil aircraft, in similar fashion to a licence plate on an automobile...

 VH-MVR first flew on 18 July 1966. Like the airtourer it was a low-wing monoplane with a fixed nosewheel landing gear

Tricycle gear

Tricycle gear describes an aircraft undercarriage, or landing gear, arranged in a tricycle fashion. The tricycle arrangement has one wheel in the front, called the nose wheel, and two or more main wheels slightly aft of the center of gravity...

 and powered by a 210 hp Continental IO-360-H

Continental IO-360

The Continental IO-360 is a family of fuel-injected air-cooled, six-cylinder aircraft engines manufactured by Continental Motors in the United States of America, now part of the Teledyne corporation, since 1962....

 piston engine. Rather than the sliding roof of the Airtourer the four-seat Aircruiser had a fixed cabin roof.

Following the sale of the design rights of the Airtourer to Aero Engine Services Limited (AESL) of New Zealand the rights to the Aircruiser were also sold to AESL in 1969. AESL re-designed the aircraft as the AESL CT/4 Airtrainer, a fully aerobatic military trainer.

Specifications

See also