The Barber Snark is a two-seater kit-plane, designed and built in New Zealand by Bill Barber. Only some five aircraft have been built.
Design and development
The Snark is a tricycle aircraft of composite construction. Its glider-like cockpit accommodates a pilot and passenger in tandem, the passenger sitting behind and higher than the pilot. The centrally mounted shoulder-wing lies behind the pilot, who has unrestricted visibility. The Suzuki engine is sited behind the cockpit, driving a pusher propeller. Wing control surfaces on the third Snark were flaperons, while the fourth aircraft had conventional ailerons and flaps. Above the propeller, and aft of the cockpit is a slender boom to the empennage comprising a T-tail with a high-mounted tailplane. The Snark's tandem layout, its small frontal area, and its low wetted area mean that the aircraft has excellent performance, being able to cruise at over 110 knots despite having an engine output of only 80 bhp.
Reception
The Snark received positive reviews in the UK and NZ press. Former RNZAF Squadron Leader and aviation journalist Tim Cripps wrote in Pilot magazine, "this is the most enjoyable of the many aircraft I have flown - and that includes the Hunter". Similarly, David Laing, a former WWII pilot who built the fourth Snark, declared it to be "one of the nicest planes I've ever flown".
The future
Although it was envisaged that the design might be introduced to the United States or to Europe, costs proved prohibitive. Tim Cripps was involved in negotiations to bring the Snark to the UK, but ultimately he concluded that "the huge amount of work involved in getting PFA approval" was too great, adding that without knowing the "stress calculations, and build details you would have an impossible job to reverse engineer it, and the PFA would have to ask you to demonstrate the breaking strength of many parts, in lieu of calculations or proper stress analysis". Accordingly, there are no current plans to build any more Snarks.
