Aviation heritage & community

Some things are worth preserving even when they are not products.

Aviation history does not live only in airframes. It lives in drawings and photographs, in plans and technical notes, in old websites and forum threads, in build logs, flying stories and the lessons builders passed to each other over decades. We think that material deserves to survive too — and that the people who created it deserve a home that stays up.

Visit the builder community Read the history

Kept — an early Carlson Sparrow in flight

Black-and-white photograph of an early Carlson Sparrow in flight over farmland — FIG. 01An early Carlson Sparrow in flightCarlson Aircraft archive

01 — What survives

History lives in more than drawings.

A design outlives its company only if the knowledge around it survives. Most of that knowledge was never in a manual.

When a small aircraft company changes hands, the airframes and the tooling get counted. The rest is easy to lose: a website that lapses, a forum that goes dark, a filing cabinet of drawings that goes to the curb, the one person who knew why a part was made the way it was. We treat that material as part of the responsibility, not as a by-product of it.

Aviation history lives in

Drawings
Photographs
Builder discussions
Plans
Technical knowledge
Old websites
Stories
Forums
Communities
Institutional memory

Original Carlson Aircraft three-view drawing of the Sparrow with a specifications table and title block — FIG. 02Original Sparrow three-view drawingCarlson Aircraft archive

02 — IsonAircraft.com & the ETLB Forum

A home for the Ison and TEAM builder community.

IsonAircraft.com is the live home of the ETLB Forum — the East Tennessee Lonesome Buzzards — the builder community around Wayne Ison’s designs and the TEAM aircraft that followed them.

Av8r Capital Group owns and stewards IsonAircraft.com and is preserving its connection to Wayne Ison, the Mini-Max family and the homebuilt-aircraft community.

The forum carries the migrated content of the previous ETLB board and the bulletin-board archives that preceded it, including material from the late 1990s and early 2000s that had been lost for years. It is organized by aircraft — Mini-Max, Hi-Max, AirBike, V-Max, SuperMax, AeroMax and the other TEAM designs — and by subject: construction, covering, engines, propellers, flying and safety.

The posts, photographs and build logs belong to the people who wrote them. Our job is to keep the lights on, keep the archive intact and keep the board active — not to own what the community built.

Visit the builder community

Threads: 14,469; Live forum figure, 5 October 2026
Messages: 114,985; Live forum figure, 5 October 2026
Archive: 3decades; Of builder discussion, migrated with the BBS archives that preceded the forum

Forum statistics as published on isonaircraft.com, 5 October 2026.

03 — Lonesome Buzzards

Aircraft survive because builders share knowledge.

lonesomebuzzards.com was the community’s long-time address. Av8r Capital Group owns and manages it, and it now points to the ETLB Forum at IsonAircraft.com — one community, one archive, one place to ask.

A bare welded steel-tube fuselage frame of a Carlson Sparrow on a driveway — FIG. 03Sparrow steel-tube fuselage frameCarlson Aircraft archive

Decades of Mini-Max, Hi-Max and AirBike owners have worked out, in public, how these airplanes are built, repaired, modified, powered and flown. That record is a large part of the reason a design from the 1980s is still buildable today — and it only exists because people kept writing it down for each other.

What the community holds

Construction techniques
Troubleshooting
Modifications
Engine experiences
Photographs
Flying experiences
Lessons learned
Safety discussion
Encouragement
Decades of accumulated builder knowledge

Builders helping builders.
What the forum is for, in three words

04 — History

From Wayne Ison’s drawing board to Niles, Michigan.

A short lineage, kept to what the record supports. Av8r Capital Group owns and manages the current brands, domains and archives named here; it does not claim to have owned the historical companies.

01
Wayne Ison
A pioneer of homebuilt and ultralight aviation. Before the Mini-MAX, Ison developed early designs including the PDQ and PDQ 2 — airplanes built on the belief that personal flying could be simpler, lighter and more affordable.
02
Ison Aircraft
Sold plans and kits for the Original 1100R Mini-MAX: a straightforward single-seat, wood-and-fabric airplane that a homebuilder could actually finish and fly.
03
TEAM Aircraft
As interest grew the company became TEAM — Tennessee Engineering and Manufacturing — and the family grew with it: the MAX-103, the Sport models, the Hi-MAX, the V-MAX and the EROS. The AirBike and Tandem AirBike, the SuperMax and the AeroMax belong to the same lineage of TEAM and Ison designs.
04
The East Tennessee Lonesome Buzzards
Around these airplanes a builder community formed — a forum, and before it a bulletin board — kept running by volunteers for roughly three decades. Its archive is where much of the practical knowledge about the designs now lives.
05
JDT Mini-Max — 2003
New owners renamed the company JDT Mini-Max and based it in Nappanee, Indiana, supporting existing customers and continuing development work, including the AeroMax.
06
Team Mini-Max LLC — 2012
Reorganized as Team Mini-Max LLC in Niles, Michigan, with a focus on builder support, updated production methods and parts.
07
Mini-Max USA — 2025
Acquired in 2025 and relaunched as Mini-Max USA, a brand of Av8r Capital Group Corp: plans, kits and parts produced in Niles, and support for the fleet already flying.
08
IsonAircraft.com — 2026
The ETLB Forum moved to IsonAircraft.com with its archive intact — including recovered material from the late 1990s and early 2000s — under Av8r Capital Group’s stewardship.

Sources: the Mini-Max USA company history on flyminimax.com and the ETLB Forum at isonaircraft.com, both read on 5 October 2026. Where the record is incomplete we have left it out rather than fill it in.

A blue and white AeroMax in flight, seen from above against a hazy landscape — FIG. 04AeroMax in flightMini-Max USA

A red Mini-Max aircraft with a bare wood-and-fabric fuselage parked on a cracked asphalt ramp in front of hangars — FIG. 05Mini-Max on the rampMini-Max USA

05 — Why it matters now

Past knowledge. Current support. Future builders.

The archive, the company that answers the phone today and the next person to open a set of plans are one story. Keeping them connected is the work.

01
Past knowledge
The archive: three decades of what worked, what broke and what builders did about it, kept intact and searchable.
02
Current support
Mini-Max USA answers the plans, parts and builder-assist questions today, from the Niles facility — with the archive as a reference, not a replacement.
03
Future builders
Someone discovering a Mini-Max for the first time should find the plans, the parts and the people in one place. That is the point of keeping all three together.