Having formerly resurrected the storied shape of the Ryan ST—in effigy, anyway—Montrose, Colorado-based Timber Tiger Aircraft has plied its considerable expertise and experience to the revival of the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company’s JN-4—a World War I-era biplane known colloquially by generations of pilots and aviation enthusiasts as the Curtiss Jenny, or simply, Jenny.
In point of fact, Timber Tiger has purchased the rights to sell Dennis Wiley’s Early Bird Jenny design as a kit. It should be noted, however, that while Wiley’s Early Bird Jenny was a 67-percent scale replica of Curtiss’s 1915-vintage military-training biplane, Timber Tiger’s kitted Jenny is a 75-percent scale facsimile.
Timber Tiger Aircraft president Nick Pfannenstiel set forth his company’s basic Jenny kit comprises a welded steel fuselage with blueprints spelling out the remainder of the airframe’s constituent parts and the assembly thereof.
Cognizant of the high-value growing numbers of contemporary builders ascribe to instant gratification, Timber Tiger will offer reduced-build-time Jenny kits which can be assembled lickety-split by Millennial and Gen-Z builders habituated to two-minute pop-songs and twenty-second YouTube video shorts. Such kits permit builders to select options à la carte—after the fashion of neurotics at a sushi bar.
“We’re trying to bring back a community of Early Bird Jenny builders,” Pfannenstiel remarked. “In addition to having a slightly larger fuselage, our kits will have CNC-machined components and improved hardware. To differentiate between the original plans-built version and our kit, we’re calling ours Gen 2.”
Engineering and a structural analyses germane to the Gen 2 Jenny’s increased gross weight have been completed. Differences in mass notwithstanding, Pfannenstiel avers the Gen 2 Jenny conforms faithfully to the existing, eminently proven design.
“I am going to build one for myself,” Pfannenstiel asserted. “My wife is just now hearing that. That’s my level of interest in it.”
Timber Tiger estimates shipping of Gen 2 Jenny kits will commence in October 2023.
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