Bede's exciting, controversial designs infused new excitement into the field of "home-building" (amateur builders making their own planes), and ignited an explosion in the tiny "kitplane" movement - now the most common form of homebuilding. The latter design, the BD-5, was partially pre-assembled at the Bede Aircraft factory in Newton, Kansas, in kits for homebuilders - including the world's smallest jet, the BD-5J. Meanwhile, Jim Bede's fame from the American Yankee helped boost Bede's further adventures with other radical, cheap/speedy designs, including his BD-4 and BD-5 kitplanes. Meyer eventually became head of all the aviation enterprises of Cessna's parent company, Textron, a role he still performs intermittently to this day (see Bell Helicopter, below). Russ Meyer's outstanding airplane-manufacturing management skills caught the eye of Cessna Aircraft, who brought him aboard, quickly moving him to the leadership of the company, to replace retiring Dwane Wallace. maker of small light planes, then ushered the company into the hands of aerospace giant Grumman. Meyer grew the company into the 4th-largest-volume U.S. Meyer oversaw the refinement of the AA-1 line into a more marketable aircraft, and its growth into a superior four-seat design, the AA-5 (today, the final variant of that design, the AG-5B Tiger, is one of the most in-demand light planes). When fledgling American fell on hard times, it was brought back from the brink of failure by a fighter-pilot-turned-lawyer, Russ Meyer. A horde of new enthusiasts entered general aviation, on the allure of Bede's popular "personal fighter plane."īede manufactured his first design, the BD‑1, through Cleveland-basedĪmerican Aviation in the early-1970s. The radically simple, light, sleek and speedy two-seater - though devilishly risky to fly - promised revolutionary performance in the cheapest all-metal airplane on the market (144 mph, and nearly acrobatic capabilites, in a $7,500 airplane). In the late 1960's / early-1970s, airplane designer Jim Bede, an aeronautical engineering graduate of Wichita State University, created the most influential, all-new, single-engine lightplane of the 1970s: the " BD-1", which became the American Aviation "AA-1 Yankee".
(makers of the Yankee, Traveler, Cheetah, Tiger and Cougar light planes) Other Aircraft Manufacturers with Kansas Ties: The BIG list of Kansas aircraft manufacturers, past & the aviation manufacturing "Air Capital" -Īviation & aircraft manufacturers, generally.
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