page_title: Klapmeier brothers
section_title: 1980s: VK-30, barn, inspiration for parachute, municipal airport
hierarchical_section_title: Klapmeier brothers / Career / Cirrus Aircraft / 1980s: VK-30, barn, inspiration for parachute, municipal airport
caption_attribution_description: Old Cirrus Team in The Late 80's. (Dale at the top far left, and Alan at the top far right.)
context_page_description: The Klapmeier brothers, Alan Lee Klapmeier and Dale Edward Klapmeier, are American aircraft designers and aviation entrepreneurs who together founded the Cirrus Design Corporation in 1984. Under the leadership of the Klapmeiers, Cirrus was the first aircraft manufacturer to install a whole-plane parachute recovery system as a standard on all its models—designed to lower the airplane safely to the ground in case of an emergency. The device is attributed with saving over 150 lives to date. From the brothers' use of all-composite airframe construction and glass panel cockpits on production aircraft, Cirrus is known for having revolutionized general aviation for modern light aircraft pilots.
  Forbes magazine named Cirrus's highly popular single-engine SR-series Best Private Airplane, saying "the Klapmeier brothers built the first genuinely new plane in the sky in many years", Time magazine regarded them as "giving lift to the small-plane industry with an easy-to-fly design", and Flying magazine ranked Alan and Dale at number 17 on its list of 51 Heroes of Aviation. The Klapmeier brothers were inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame on 4 October 2014 in Dayton, Ohio.
context_section_description: After Alan and Dale both graduated from college they formed an aircraft company in 1984, which they named "Cirrus Design" (now known as Cirrus Aircraft) in remembrance of a summer drive the brothers had a few years back where they saw cirrus clouds on the horizon and wished that they were flying. Once they formed the company, the Klapmeiers called upon Alan's old college roommate, Jeff Viken, to help out with their new design: the VK-30 (VK standing for Viken-Klapmeier). Viken was an aeronautical engineer who eventually married another aeronautical engineer, Sally Viken, and the unpaid Cirrus staff grew to four volunteers (with occasional help from the Klapmeiers' high school friend, Scott Ellenberger). The Cirrus VK-30 was a four to five-seat composite pusher with conventional wings and tail. Alan and Dale moved into the family farmhouse to be closer to the project, and began work on the airplane in the basement of the barn "down where the cows were". They all pitched in with the designing and balanced that with hands-on labor. Jeff designed the airfoil while Sally designed the flap system. The four of them would finish designing a part or a system, build it, and return to designing. Experimental aircraft innovator Molt Taylor gave the Klapmeiers and Vikens technical advice surrounding the VK-30.
  The Klapmeier brothers would often fly their Champ from the farm up to their uncle's boat-building business in Mora to borrow tools and other supplies—such as polyester resin—for building the plane and molding its fuselage. To reduce cost, they went to different junk yards around Wisconsin and bought what they needed: a control system out of a wrecked Piper aircraft, a Cherokee nose landing gear to weld parts onto it and convert it to a retractable gear, and an O-540 (290 hp) engine they got off a scrapped de Havilland Heron. The first VK-30 slowly took shape.
  In 1985, near the Sauk–Prairie Airport airport shortly after takeoff, Alan was involved in a fatal mid-air collision where his airplane lost a portion of its wing, including half of the aileron. The other plane spun into the ground killing the pilot, but Alan was able to maneuver a landing back on the runway by keeping high airspeed and using full aileron deflection. From surviving this incident, Alan sought to make flying safer—ultimately leading to the brothers' pursuit of implementing a parachute on all their designs starting in the mid-1990s.
  In 1986, the Klapmeiers hired their first paid-employee, an experienced welder and aluminum component designer by the name of Dennis Schlieckau. They then borrowed money from friends and family in order to build a hangar on the Baraboo-Wisconsin Dells Airport, and moved the VK-30 project from the barn to their new Baraboo headquarters with now only three other employees assisting them (a few years later they would build a second hangar for the production of more prototypes).
  Their first display of the VK-30 was at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh airshow in 1987. In 1988, the Cirrus team was gradually beginning to grow with over a dozen employees. That year the Klapmeiers hired a couple of their most vital employees to date: Patrick Waddick, Cirrus's current President and Chief Operating Officer (originally hired as an intern sweeping floors), and Paul Johnston, the company's Chief Engineer, also known as one of their most gifted designers. After conducting multiple stress-tests on the wing, the first VK-30 prototype was ready to fly. Both Alan and Dale wanted to make the first flight but their mother would not let them. Jeff Viken knew a test pilot from NASA Langley named Jim Patton, who made the first test flight on February 11, 1988. They sold their first few kits at EAA AirVenture later that same year. Jeff and Sally Viken left the company shortly thereafter.
  At the end of the 1980s, the Klapmeier brothers approached inventor Sam Williams of Williams International about the possibility of installing a small, single fan-jet engine on the VK-30. The idea never materialized at the time, however, this effort is what would significantly
caption: Cirrus team circa 1989-1990. (Dale top far left, Alan top far right)
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