Cirrus VK-30

The Cirrus VK-30 was a single-engine, pusher-propeller homebuilt aircraft sold as a kit by Cirrus Design, now Cirrus Aircraft, and it was the company's first model. Its name stands for Viken-Klapmeier, after two of the college friends who conceived it in the early 1980s alongside Dale Klapmeier. The all-composite five-seat design used natural laminar flow surfaces and a mid-mounted engine driving a propeller behind the tail, and it was introduced at the 1987 EAA convention in Oshkosh before first flying on 11 February 1988. Only about 40 kits were delivered before production stopped in 1993, but the lessons of the VK-30 led the founders toward the conventional certified layout of the later SR20 and SR22.