As one of the LE owners interviewed at Oshkosh and mentioned in the article, thanks.
We had a great time flying our Eagles and talking to many interested people. Wish the winds were not so high that week, though.
Anyway, the article sort of botched the info about our Radial Eagle, starting with my name which is often misspelled, should be Hubbuch. I'll tell the real story here so y'all will know.
About 10 years ago an EAA Chapter member was building a LE. He had the wing structure, fuselage and a bunch of engine work done. His hands were going bad and he was moving, so he gave it to a group of us to finish and fly, which we did (the group varied, but numbered from four to maybe eight through the years). We spent a summer working out the engine/prop, crow-hopping and flying the airplane. I always made a run down the runway to test acceleration and lift-off, and, if OK, went back and made my take-off. One day the winds seemed squirrely, so I did not fly. One of the partners took it to check out the situation, and made a take-off without a test run. He caught some tail winds which pushed him toward the trees, and, I think he reacted like he would in his old 2-stroke ultralights and pulled the stick to climb, but it mushed and made a nice landing in some trees. He got out OK, but we had to cut some limbs to get the plane down, and it was damaged. We put it in storage. Began calling it Treehugger at that time.
We had been planning to build a DE with a full VW engine, so we pursued that. Had it flying in a little over a year, after many tests and mods. One major mod was to move the heavy, fully equipped engine back to get a good flying CG point. To do this, we cut the front fuselage section and shortened it about 6 inches, which gave it a short nose. So, it was named Stubby. We have been flying it since then, accumulating 150-200 hours. It is a good flyer.
A few years ago we had a public airport day at Bowman Field, and the Chapter showed various homebuilts, including Stubby and the fuselage, engine and opened up wing of Treehugger. An RV-8 builder/owner saw the remnants, and thought it would be a good project for the coming fall and winter, so he led the group in rebuilding the airplane. One of the members announced that he purchased a Verner engine. The Carlson extruded aluminum struts were used to replace the round alum. tubes for wing struts. We put mountain bike brakes on it, with hydraulic master cylinders. The panel was updated with a real aircraft altimeter. All of this added weight - more than we were comfortable with to try to squeak by in the Part 103 rules, so we registered it as an EAB. This also allowed us to fly it into Bowman, a Class D airport. I suppose the official name is now Radial Eagle, but I still like Treehugger as the name. It also flies well, climbs good, cruises easily at a nice slow 2200 rpm.
I think I covered the major parts of the story. Don't know how all this came out as it did in Sport Aviation!
By the way, the article mentioned that this line of airplanes are given names by the owners. I believe this is an important character for the Eagles. Had some good names given, like Hog Herder, Putt-Putt, Silver Slug, ORV, Bodacious and others. So, you new builders start thinking of good names, too.
