Bernard H. Pietenpol was an aircraft designer.

Father of home built aircraft, Pietenpol was a self-taught mechanic who lived most of his life in the small community of Cherry Grove

Cherry Grove, Minnesota

Cherry Grove is an unincorporated community in Fillmore County, Minnesota, United States.The community is located south of Spring Valley near U.S. Highway 63....

 in southeastern Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

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His most well-known design, The Pietenpol Air Camper

Pietenpol Air Camper

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, is an airplane he designed to be built and flown by the "average American" of the 1930s. The Air Camper is a two-place open cockpit

Cockpit

A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft, from which a pilot controls the aircraft. Most modern cockpits are enclosed, except on some small aircraft, and cockpits on large airliners are also physically separated from the cabin...

 monoplane with "parasol" wing built from material that was, in the 1930s, readily available from local sources. Powered by a Ford Model A

Ford Model A (1927)

The Ford Model A of 1927–1931 was the second huge success for the Ford Motor Company, after its predecessor, the Model T. First produced on October 20, 1927, but not sold until December 2, it replaced the venerable Model T, which had been produced for 18 years...

 engine, Pietenpol's design was sturdy, simple and affordable. Plans were first published in Modern Mechanics and Inventions, then in the magazine's 1932 Flying and Glider manual.

With the success of the Air Camper, MMI editor Weston Farmer convinced Pietenpol to design an airplane that could be powered with the cheaper and more readily available Ford Model T

Ford Model T

The Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company from September 1908 to May 1927...

 engine. In response to Farmer's request, Pietenpol designed the single-place Pietenpol Sky Scout

Pietenpol Sky Scout

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Air Campers have been built using many (over 50 have been recorded) different power plants. Pietenpol himself liked the air-cooled Corvair engine. But his original design is well suited to the high torque, slow-turning Model "A."

A restored example of the Air Camper can be found in the inventory of the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum

Mid-Atlantic Air Museum

The Mid-Atlantic Air Museum is membership supported museum and aircraft restoration facility located at the Carl A. Spaatz Field, the regional airport serving Reading, Pennsylvania. The museum, founded by Russ Strine, the current President, collects and actively restores historic war planes and...

 in Reading, Pennsylvania

Reading, Pennsylvania

Reading is a city in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, and seat of Berks County. Reading is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area and had a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, making it the fifth most populated city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie,...

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In later years, Pietenpol sold and reparied televisions. In 1981, the Pietenpol Workshop and Garage

Pietenpol Workshop and Garage

The Pietenpol Workshop and Garage is a small building in Cherry Grove, Minnesota where aviation pioneer Bernard Pietenpol designed and built aircraft. The wood-framed structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981....

 was added to the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

. His hangar was dissasembled and relocated to Pioneer Airport, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin

Oshkosh, Wisconsin

As of the census of 2000, there were 62,916 people, 24,082 households, and 13,654 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,662.2 people per square mile . There were 25,420 housing units at an average density of 1,075.6 per square mile...

 as part of the EAA Airventure Museum

EAA AirVenture Museum

The EAA AirVenture Museum is a museum dedicated to the preservation and display of historical and experimental aircraft located in Oshkosh, Wisconsin adjacent to the Wittman Regional Airport. Paul Poberezny proposed the idea of the EAA Air Museum-Air Education center in August 1958. The current...

. Pietenpol died in 1984, and was inducted in the Minnesota Aviation Hall of Fame in 1991.