![]() But when people didn’t line up to buy it as they had hoped, the brothers decided to learn more about what people wanted from an airplane and refocus their attention to their original goal-to build certified production airplanes.īut in their quest to build their first production airplane, they soon realized that they shouldn’t be talking to pilots about what they want from an airplane. The five-seater was powered by a 300-hp Continental pusher engine and had a cruise speed of over 200 mph. So in 1987, the Klapmeiers introduced their first airplane, the VK30, at the Oshkosh AirVenture Air Show. We had no money, maybe more ambition than sense.” So here were two guys out of college who decided they had a better idea for aviation, a neat airplane that they could design, develop and build kits for. But the only way we could get started was in the kit industry. What we wanted to do was be the next Cessna, to have a manufacturing facility that’s building a whole line of airplanes and pumping them out at great rates. He continues, “From the beginning, the goal was always building production airplanes. I like to be down there and building the airplane, and he’s the one who’s drawing the pictures of what we should be building.” “Alan is the big dreamer,” explains Dale. Their mother would take them to the Chicago O’Hare Airport where the sounds of jets and airplanes flying overhead would calm the two crying brothers to sleep. The story goes that the evolution of the new Cirrus SR22-G2 began when they were mere infants. But a closer view reveals that they have much in common: a story of evolution.įor brothers Alan and Dale Klapmeier, founders of airplane manufacturer Cirrus Design Cor-poration, they found their own rhythm in aviation several years ago. Looking at the new SR22-G2 in flight over the Monument Valley looked like an anachronism, out of place and time. ![]() It was here that we met the newest evolution of the Cirrus SR22, the -G2, banking over trails below that were scratched into the landscape by cowboys, Indians and settlers on horseback centuries ago. ![]() The valley is a collection of towering buttes, spires and mesas carved out by time, winds and rain, near the four corners where Utah, Colo-rado, New Mexico and Arizona meet. The area itself is a testament to the Navajos’ beliefs about change and evolution. They gradually moved up through three more worlds before coming to where they are now, a sacred land known as the Monument Valley. The story goes that the world began in darkness, but the people weren’t happy in that place. That’s how the land and its native people originated, they say. The Navajo Indians believe that everything has its own rhythm, its own beat, its own time to birth, to flourish, to change, to adapt.
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