George Walter Meyer

Designer and Builder of Little Toot

(January 16, 1916 - October 28, 1982)

George W. Meyer’s contributions to the aviation community began long before 1952, when he started the Little Toot. George was already a well known craftsman and model airplane builder prior to his full size project. He started the Little Toot by drawing it in ½ inch to the foot scaled drawings and proceeded to build a metal, 1/24” scale model of his dreams.

The model duplicated what he wanted in the full size airplane including a scale metal engine. Many of the building processes were refined in the small model, prior to starting the full size project. Well it must have worked, because the airplane performed perfectly on the first flight with only a slight adjustment to the rudder trim tab. The first flight was flown on February 2, 1957 in Corpus Christi, Texas. The pilot for the test flight was a great lady pilot by the name of Pauline Glasson, who at 92 is still a flight instructor in Corpus Christi today. All the test hours were flown off and the plane came through with flying colors. The plane was fully aerobatic, and had no bad habits in stall or spin type maneuvers. George originally intended for the Toot to be a one of a kind airplane, but the requests for plans soon overwhelmed that decision so he began to produce plans with all of the modifications incorporated into them that he had made during the project.

The first fly-in to see Little Toot was the 1957 EAA Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he promptly took the top award from Mechanics Illustrated for “Outstanding Achievement in a Homebuilt Aircraft”. He also took 2^nd place in “Outstanding Design”, and “Longest Distance Flown” to the convention.

Rumor has it that Paul Poberezny took George aside and told him that he had won 1^st place in every event they had, but that if he gave them all to George, no one would ever come back. So Paul told him to pick the one he wanted most, and George choose the Mechanics Illustrated award

George was an early pioneer and promoter of the EAA, as evident by his EAA member number of 64, which was later passed to George’s son, Tommy Meyer who currently carries it proudly. George designed, worked on, and completed the Little Toot project out of a single car garage. He was a craftsman, designer, and experimenter in every since of the word.

George’s design and spirit continue today with an airplane that is still popular in appearance and functionality. There are approximately 30 completed and flying Toots around the country today, from coast to coast and Canada. Hundreds of projects that are in various stages of completion are sure to continue George’s dream well into the next millennium. I will finish with an extraction from the January 2000 Sport Aviation article on “Biplanes You Can Build”, by Budd Davisson.

"Aviators considered the Meyer’s Little Toot the Cadillac of the breed”.

Not bad for an experimenters dream, and a one car garage……………

This article was written by Phil Witt and was submitted with his nomination of George W. Meyer to the EAA's Homebuilders Hall of Fame..

This picture of the original was taken in 1966 at Cuddihy Field in Corpus Christi, Texas..

George Meyer constructed this Super scale model of Little Toot with all control surfaces hooked up and working. He used this design for the full size prototype.