Tipsy B

The Tipsy B was a small two-seat sports monoplane designed by Ernest Oscar Tips, the manager of Avions Fairey, the Belgian subsidiary of the Fairey Aviation Company. It was a wooden low-wing cantilever monoplane covered in a mixture of plywood and canvas, with side-by-side seating in which the two seats were slightly staggered to keep the fuselage narrow, and a 60 horsepower Walter Mikron four-cylinder inverted in-line engine. It first flew from the Avions Fairey airfield at Gosselies near Charleroi on 8 May 1937, and a week later it was being demonstrated in Britain. The Belgian factory built twenty-four before the German invasion of 1940, some with an enclosed canopy as the Tipsy Bc, and a British licence builder produced a modified version, the Tipsy Trainer, with washout in the wing tips, flaps and a larger rudder. About forty-two were built in all, and a few are still flying.