Early Bird Jenny
The Early Bird Jenny is an American homebuilt aircraft that was designed by Dennis Wiley and produced by the Early Bird Aircraft Company of Erie, Colorado, also by Leading Edge Airfoils of Peyton, Colorado. When it was available the aircraft was supplied as a kit and also in the form of plans for amateur construction. Design and development. The aircraft is a 67% scale replica of the First World War Curtiss JN-4 Jenny. It features a strut-braced biplane layout, a two-seats-in-tandem open cockpit, fixed conventional landing gear and a single engine in tractor  configuration. At the time the kit was first made available the aircraft could be constructed as a US FAR 103 Ultralight Vehicles exemption two-seat trainer or as an amateur-built aircraft. The Jenny is made from a mix of steel and aluminum tubing, with some wooden parts and its flying surfaces covered with doped aircraft fabric. Its span wing has a wing area of and the cockpit width is . The acceptable power range is and the standard engines used are the Rotax 503, Rotax 532, Rotax 582, Rotax 618 two-stroke engines and the Geo Metro-based fuel injected  Raven 1000 UL three cylinder, inline, liquid-cooled, four stroke automotive conversion powerplant. The aircraft has a typical empty weight of and a gross weight of , giving a useful load of . With full fuel of the payload for pilot, passenger and baggage is . The supplied kit included the Rotax 503 engine. The manufacturer estimated the aircraft's construction time from the kit to be 500 hours. Operational history. By 1998 the company reported that 53 kits had been sold and 24 aircraft were flying.