Experimenter

October 2013

Experimenter is a magazine created by EAA for people who build airplanes. We will report on amateur-built aircraft as well as ultralights and other light aircraft.

Issue link: http://experimenter.epubxp.com/i/194874

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 14 of 40

Jeff and John Hanson's Grand Champion Hatz Classic Homebuilt It was a father/son team from Minnesota who won the Gold Lindy designating their Hatz Classic open-cockpit biplane as the Grand Champion plans-built aircraft at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2013. What an incredible bonding experience it must have been to have a homebuilt aircraft as a central focus in their lives for the 10 years that went into its construction. They finished it in 2009, and Jeff Hanson, the son, flew it to AirVenture in 2013 and entered the aircraft judging on what could almost be called a whim. He called his dad, John, a few days later and said, "Five guys have already signed off on this thing." Another few days went by, and he told his dad there were 17 sets of initials on the "Judge Me" sign hanging on his prop. "Guess what?" he said when he called his dad a day later with a Gold Lindy in his hands. The measure of the builders' surprise may exceed the sense of satisfaction they enjoyed in receiving the award. and featured a number of significant changes from the original CB-1, such as push tubes in place of cables, aluminum ailerons, and a larger engine. There were no plans for the Classic, just Dawson's prototype, but Dawson's friend, Jeff Shoemake, agreed to reverse engineer the aircraft and develop some plans and eventually kits. Jeff and John signed up for a set. They were 12th in line. (Perhaps ten times that number have been issued since then.) In July of 1999, wing drawings arrived and the work began. They ordered wood from Wicks and began working on a set of wings. Since Jeff had the room for the four wing panels, the work started in his basement. In one of the few deviations from the plans, Jeff discarded the aluminum ailerons in favor of wood and fabric, but that was after making an attempt to bend and rivet aluminum. Meanwhile, Today Jeff is 42; his dad is 74. John grew up in an aviation environment (his father started working at the Rochester airport when John was 3), got his private ticket in 1957 at age 18, and went on to earn a commercial and IFR ratings. John, whose roots with EAA go back to Rockford, Illinois, in 1966—his EAA number is 26876—built a singleseat Rose Parakeet biplane between 1969 and 1978. He still has it and often flies formation with Jeff, who in turn fills the front seat of the Hatz with his son who is now 13. The two aircraft are pretty closely matched in performance, which makes formation flying easy. The idea for building the Hatz began to take shape in 1997 when John spotted an article on Billy Dawson's Hatz Classic in EAA Sport Aviation. For a while, he'd been thinking about building a second airplane and began discussing the possibility of a joint venture with Jeff. Jeff, who picked up his private certificate in 2001, shared his dad's enthusiasm for all things that fly. John (lef) and Jef Hanson. There was no doubt that the project was going to be another biplane. Jeff showed some positive interest in the article, and in the spring of 1998 the two men went to the National Biplane Association Fly-In in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and managed to each get a ride in a Hatz. That experience converted the talk into action. Later that summer, at AirVenture, they had some discussions with Billy Dawson, who had built several Hatz biplanes, always adding to the basic original CB-1 design until he came up with a version he called the Hatz Classic. It was influenced by Dawson's love of Wacos On the lef, the Rose Parakeet John built from 1969 to 1978, and the Hatz Classic. Tey ofen fy the airplanes in formation as the biplanes match up well performance-wise. EAA Experimenter 15

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Experimenter - October 2013