The Practavia Sprite is a British two-seat homebuilt training or touring

monoplane A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple wings. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing con ...

designed for amateur construction. It was the winning entry in a competition sponsored by ''

Pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its Aircraft flight control system, directional flight controls. Some other aircrew, aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are al ...

'' magazine in 1968. The design had been begun as a magazine-sponsored project by

Peter Garrison Peter Garrison is an American journalist and amateur aircraft designer/builder. He was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1943, and received a BA in English from Harvard College in 1965. In 1968–1973, while living in Tarzana, California, h ...

, who worked for ''Pilot'' at the time; when the project did not move forward rapidly enough to suit him, he returned to the United States, where he modified his design into what would become his first Melmoth.

Development

The prototype Sprite, named the Pilot Sprite, was designed by a team at

Loughborough University Loughborough University (abbreviated as ''Lough'' or ''Lboro'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public university, public research university in the market town of Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. It has been a university sinc ...

and had little in common with Garrison's design, though both were all-metal side-by-side low-wing cantilever monoplanes with tricycle landing gear. The Sprite was powered by a Rolls-Royce Continental O-240-A piston engine. Plans for amateur building were marketed by Practavia Ltd as the Practavia Sprite.

Specifications

References

* * * {{Peter Garrison aircraft 1970s British civil utility aircraft Homebuilt aircraft Loughborough University Garrison aircraft Low-wing aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1971