Great Lakes Aircraft Company is an aircraft manufacturer known for the 2T-1A Sport Trainer

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...

. The company has a long history of building both private and

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aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...

Origins

In 1929, the Great Lakes Aircraft Company (GLAC) was formed in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

at the former site of the

Martin Aircraft The Glenn L. Martin Company—also known as The Martin Company from 1957-1961—was an American aircraft and aerospace manufacturing company founded by aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin, and operated between 1917-1961. The Martin Company produc ...

Company. They built civilian biplanes,

float plane A floatplane is a type of seaplane with one or more slender floats mounted under the fuselage to provide buoyancy. By contrast, a flying boat uses its fuselage for buoyancy. Either type of seaplane may also have landing gear suitable for land, m ...

s, as well as biplane

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and

dive bombers A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target simplifies the bomb's trajectory and allows the pilot to keep visual contact throughou ...

under contract to the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...

. In 1933 the Company was reportedly working on a steam power plant for driving aircraft turbines.

Great Lakes Trophy

The Great Lakes Trophy was awarded in 1930 and 1931 to the fastest plane with an engine of 510 cubic inches or less that participated in the

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2T biplane

The model that most people think of today when someone says, "Great Lakes aircraft," is the enduring 2T biplane; also known as the

Great Lakes Sport Trainer The Great Lakes Sport Trainer is an American biplane trainer and aerobatic aircraft. It was originally produced in large numbers before the company building it went bankrupt in the Great Depression in 1933. Owing to its continuing popularity, ho ...

. It was designed and sold as a two-place, open cockpit biplane. The first

engines An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ...

were an 85 hp (63 kW) American Cirrus III. The 2T biplane was not as large as some of its contemporaries manufactured by Stearman,

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and

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Great Lakes 2T-1A Sportster (2834548299)

The original models had a wing span of 26 feet 8 inches and length of 20 feet 4 inches. The useful load was 578 pounds (262 kg) and it was stressed for 9 ''g'' positive and 6 ''G'' negative. It had outrigger landing gear with spring oleo shock struts, and the range was 375 miles. The sale price started out at $4,990 dollars but as the depression came it was lowered to $3,985. The first four Sport Trainers built were of a rare straight-wing design, one of which was modified into a special racer. Because of problems recovering from flat spins, the top wing was swept back and that is what most people recognize first when looking at a Sport Trainer. At its peak, Great Lakes had as many as 650 deposits for new aircraft. With the onset of the great depression, the Great Lakes Aircraft Company went out of business closing their doors in 1936. The company built just 264 of the Sport Trainers ordered. The remaining stock of aircraft parts, as well as a complete set of drawings, were purchased at a bankruptcy sale by Charles E. Smith of

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Aerobatic planes

As the years went by, the original Cirrus engine installation was replaced by

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radials, inline Menascos or Fairchild-Rangers, and horizontally-opposed Lycomings, Franklins, or Continentals. Tex Rankin, a stunt pilot of the 1930s and 1940s, made the Great Lakes Sport Trainer famous. He had one specially modified and installed a 150 hp

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Menasco engine. It was painted red, white and blue with his name upright on one side, and upside down in the other, so folks would know who he was when he flew by upside down. Tex's airplane is being restored by the

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Aviation Museum. For about 30 years, until the late 1960s, the Great Lakes Sport Trainer was the top American-made acro plane. Other pilots who made the Great Lakes reputation famous were: Hal Krier, Hank Kennedy, Bob "Tiger" Nance, Lindsay Parsons, Dorothy Hester,

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, Charley Hillard, and Frank Price. The first United States entry in a world

aerobatics Aerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in conventional passenger-carrying flights. The term is a portmanteau of "aerial" and "acrobatics". Aerobatics are performed in aeroplanes and glid ...

contest was a Great Lakes biplane that Frank Price of Texas took to

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in 1960.

Re-establishment of the company

During the 1960s Harvey Swack of Cleveland, Ohio, obtained the rights to the Sport Trainer design and all the factory drawings for it. Harvey then sold plans to homebuilders until 1990, when he sold off the plans business to Steen Aero Lab of

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. There have been a great number homebuilt Great Lakes Sport Trainers built over the years, which kept interest in this old biplane alive. In 1973 Doug Champlin brought the Great Lakes back into production in Oklahoma. The general design was not changed much. The fuselage was strengthened by using thicker walled tubing, and the engines used were 150 or 180 hp Lycomings. The wings utilized

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in place of

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, and on some models, additional

ailerons An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in Flight dynamics, roll (or ...

were added to the top wing. 137 airframes were produced. Doug Champlin also built one Turbine powered Great Lakes 2T. With 420 hp (310 kW), it was quite a show stopper.Davisson, Budd
"420 HP Turbine Powered Great Lakes....No, We're Not Kidding."
''Air Progress', November 1976 via ''airbum.com''. Retrieved: December 16, 2010. In 1978 Dean Franklin bought Champlin's interest in Great Lakes and the factory, inventory and several airframes in various stages of completion were moved to Eastman, Georgia. Franklin completed the in process airframes and then built serial numbers 1001 through 1010. Franklin still owns serial number 1001. Franklin sold Great Lakes to a group in New England and they went out of business in 1983. In 2000, John Duncan of

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, bought the Great Lakes Sport Trainer type certificate and tooling. In 2006 Duncan announced his plan to bring the Sport Trainer back into production once again. When he gets 10 airplane orders, the factory will begin production. Duncan's company today is called The Great Lakes Aircraft Company LLC.

Aircraft

References

External links

Great Lakes Aircraft Company
{{Great Lakes aircraft Aircraft manufacturers of the United States Manufacturing companies based in Cleveland Manufacturing companies based in Colorado El Paso County, Colorado