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Lake Aircraft with bases in Laconia New Hampshire, Kissimmee Florida and Stanford Maine, is currently the world's only manufacturer of certified single engine flying boats. Although largely unknown by the public, the people at Lake Aircraft have been building flying boats for over half a century. It all began in 1946 when David B. Thurston and Herbert P Lindbad founded the Colonial Aircraft Corporation. Previously the two talented engineers had been working for the Grumman Aircraft Company on the successful Grumman Goose and Widgeon amphibian twins. They also worked on a lesser-known aircraft, the G-65 Tadpole, that flew for the first time in 1944.
The Tadpole was a single engine two-seater flying boat that was geared towards the private and business market. Before proving it's self to the top executives at Grumman the Tadpole program got scrapped, much to the dismay of Thurston and Herbert. They were both a firm believer of a marker for such an aircraft and driven by this belief they left Grumman and set up shop for themselves.
Their first aircraft was the three-seater Colonial Skimmer. This aircraft with a now characteristic pylon mounted engine on top of the fuselage, first flew in the summer of 1948. Colonial eventually built 42 Skimmers of which 18 were Skimmer 2's which had four seats.
Because of slow sales, Colonial had to close their doors in 1959, but haunted by his dream Herbert Lindbad soon after founded a new company under the name Lake Aircraft Corporation.
Lindbad almost redesigned the Skimmer from the ground up, before re-introducing it as the LA-4 in 1959. Three years later, Lake was bought by Consolidated Aeronautics Inc. who split Lake up in two divisions. On one side was Aerofab Inc, that was to built the aircraft in Stanford, Maine and on the other side was the Lake Aircraft Division that was to take care of the sale and service of the aircraft.
In 1979, Armand Rivard bought both divisions and has been building Lakes of various shapes and sizes ever since.
As said, Lake started building the LA-4 back in the 60's. This was a four-seater aircraft powered by a 180 HP pylon mounted engine. A decent performer on land and in the air, the LA-4 was somewhat of a disappointment on the water. When operated off water, the LA-4 was downgraded to a two seat aircraft. The 180 ponies on the roof just could not lift anything more then that.
This prompted Lake to install a 200 HP Lycoming instead, turning the LA-4 into the LA-4-200. From this moment the designation was complemented by the name 'Buccaneer'. During the early eighties the Buccaneer was replaced by the LA-200EP (Extra Power). To claim the extra power the EP received a lengthened propeller shaft and a much-improved cowling, resulting in less drag and more thrust. Some EP's also received a reversible propeller, greatly improving the slow speed handling on water. These now rare aircraft, received the designation LA-200EPR.
In 1982 Lake took a huge step forward with the introduction of the greatly improved LA-250 Renegade. The Renegade still bares the family features of the earlier models but is enlarged to accommodate 6 adults quite comfortably. Up in the pylon the Four Cylinder IO-360 made way for a six Cylinder IO-540 that produces 250 HP. Besides a jump in useful load, the Renegade offers much improved water handling, through it's substantially longer deep V hull. To feed the thirstier Lycoming, the fuel capacity was increased to a maximum of 90 gallons. Besides these obvious modifications, many more detail improvements found their way into the new Renegade.
In 1987 a Turbo charged variant of the Renegade, the LA-270T Turbo Renegade was introduced to accommodate altitude hungry aviators.
Although the Renegade is universally accepted as a very capable aircraft, Lake hasn't been sitting still in recent years. The Renegades are slowly being replaced on the production line by Seafuries. As the name implies, the Seafury is especially geared to salt water operations. The biggest difference between it and the Renegade is the generous use of space age ceramic corrosion proofing techniques to protect the Seafury's construction in the harshest of environments. The Seafury comes in both the 250 normally aspirated and the 270 HP turbocharged versions.
Last but not least there are the two military versions of the Renegade family. The most potent is the Seawolfe. Blessed with a higher gross weight, a 290 HP turbocharged engine, and six standard Nato hard points under the wing, the Seawolf can be adapted for a multitude of missions. The most frequent use of this wolf in sheep's clothes, is that of Marine Patrol and Search and Rescue With it's capacity to carry rockets, guns, night vision equipment, radar and infra red and visible spectrum camera's however, the Lake aircraft has also been used for biological surveys including red drum, sea turtle and marine mammal surveys, as well as on site terrain observations.
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