LAST EDITED ON Oct-26-00 AT 08:14 PM (EST)This is an upside-down P.S., added via an edit. The fullsize Nobler, in every variety, was more plane than the 19's of that plane's own era might haul - any manufacturer's. There's a lot of talk about modern Schneurle 20's equalling the potential weight-pulling torque of Fox 35's, but I haven't seen one of those in a plane as massive as a Nobler yet.
The very first Nobler was built without much of a plan at all and was down here in Texas when George was asked to write a construction article (he could've suggested it to MAN's editor, but didn't put it that way when telling the story to me). He drew a set of plans for the magazine article that is the official "OTS-qualified" version. It is also actually "version two." But his opinion is that the design was so far ahead of its time that Miske should've omitted it.
The original plane was still flying when Top Flite decided to produce a kit, and asked George for two sets of plans. One was for the kits' builders, another was for Top Flite's own use. Once again, when George drew the plan he didn't have his own actual plane to measure from. He didn't even have the MAN plan set at hand. That became version three.
About 1958, the original plane suffered a total loss crash, but George saved all of the pieces for the next thirty-some-odd years (in a brown paper grocery sack). In the late 1980's, he started on building a replica of his own original, measuring everything from the pieces in the grocery bag. He drew a plan while he was doing this, and there is plenty of documentation about his first plane, although there never was a plan for it until so recently.
It is my understanding that John Brodak's Nobler kit is based on those 1989 or 1990 plans of George's. Besides Aldrich, there have been French versions, a couple of Giesecke versions, and a half-ton more that were thinly disguised clones.
