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. 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 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.
George was an early pioneer and promoter of the EAA, as evident by his EAA member number of 64, heired to his son, Tommy Meyer. 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 sense of the word.
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 2nd place in “Outstanding Design”.
