Building a Great Lakes Sport 2T Sport Trainer

Great Lakes 2T1A-VR I-ESON
"the Outatime Flyer"

March 24th - 2005
Meeting with Don Sergent, a Great Lakes legend

On March 24th 2005, Steve Davis kindly organized for me a meeting with Don Sergeant at Cheraw airport, South Carolina.
On a CAVOK morning, we flew down into a Cessna 172 and met Don at the Taxiway. he was waiting for us into his big red Pickup car, he's over 80 years old!!.
We then entered into an Hangar to visit Doc. Hewson collection: a P51 Mustang, a 450hp Stearman and... the Great Lakes!!

Great Lakes N831J is one of the 17 experimental Great Lakes actually built by Don Sergent. It is powered by a 6 cylinders LOM engine, supercharged up to 210 hp.
In fact the engine sold with my project comes from this airplane and was substituted by the supercharged version.

Steve Davis and Don Sergent

The 210hp LOM powered N831J Great Lakes

Don showed me a lot of details (this was the first Great Lakes seen "live" in my life) and gave me a lot of tips to build mine. One of the most important suggestion he gave was to place the oil tank as lower as possible to avoid drain of oil from the exhausts.
On N831J the oil tank is higher and the engine always leaks when resting into the Hangar (see picture).

Unfortunately, one hour wasn't enough for me to do eveything I wished to, but it was a fantastic experience however.

Go to News page

Legal disclaimer: This site is NOT the official Great Lakes Aircraft Company site. The contents of this site are the opinion of the author, not CAP, FAA or ENAC. Please check all information is correct before you act upon it.