John Dyke, EAA Lifetime 3566, generously donated his Dyke Delta JD-2 to EAA on May 28.
The Dyke Delta JD-2, N555A, was the very first airplane to land on the EAA Oshkosh grounds in 1970. This model is also the first of its kind, built by John Dyke himself.
John built the Dyke Delta with a wingspan of 22 feet, with the main goal being for it to fit into a single car garage and be small enough that it could be pulled behind a vehicle on the highway.
“I looked at all of the other airplanes and I wanted a roadable airplane,” John said. “I wanted one that would self-propel out on the highway. Well, the Delta fit the design parameters: the size of it, the folding wing size.”
John started building the Dyke Delta in September 1960. It flew for the first time on July 17, 1962, and has flown for 57 years with about 24,000 hours of flying time.
The Dyke Delta is a four-seat monoplane with a retractable tricycle undercarriage. The wings can be folded upward one atop the other, for towing or storage.
John’s inspiration for the Dyke Delta came from Gen. Alexander Lippisch.
“I was in the Navy, I had the opportunity to go to Germany and visit the Lippisch Museum,” John said. “Gen. Lippisch, he was my mentor. I went and studied everything he did. I sat and read all his books. In fact, I had the opportunity to go through his library.”
John said he has always been interested in design. In fact, his first design was as a teenager.
“When I was a farm boy, I used to dream I could design an airplane and I could herd the cattle with it,” John said. “When I was a kid, about 13-14 years old, I’d take the washing machine motor off my mother’s washing machine and I’d put it on my bicycle and put propellers on it.”
John said there was no plan for the Dyke Delta to be the first at EAA Oshkosh, it was just pure luck. John’s wife was involved with working on the grounds and had always arrived early to all the conventions for that reason. This time, John decided to come up early too and just so happened to be the first airplane to arrive.
“The first EAA convention I ever went to only had 12 airplanes and eight campers,” John said. “Now that I look at it, it’s just hard to imagine how much it’s grown and how fast it’s grown. As Paul [Poberezny] said one day, we were driving around in his Volkswagen, and he said, ‘John, what do you think about these fly-ins? We never dreamed it would be like this.’”
Alan White, EAA Lifetime 60137, became good friends with John after he bought a set of plans from him so he could build a Dyke Delta himself.
“I don’t like to burn that much gas so I’m usually cruising mine about 165 to 170 miles an hour and I can do that on 8-1/2 to 9 gallons an hour at altitude,” Alan said. “If I needed to get someplace, it’s capable … at 7,000 to 8,000 feet of 166 knots true air speed.”
Alan said the Dyke Delta is the most stable airplane he has ever flown. “For a cross-country airplane, you just sit back, relax, and enjoy the view,” Alan said. “Perfectly controllable with rudder for anything you need to do in cruise.”
