Contrary to most other aircrafts I actually know where my fascination for the jaeger originate from.

In the early 80:ies Modelhob (a Spanish kit manufacturer) introduced a scale kit of the der jaeger IX. Of course I bought the kit of that great looking bright yellow biplane.. First I believed it to be a original modell airplane design it took a while before I realized it was actually a scale model of an experimental aircraft.

Built by Californian resident EM White in 1969 the Jaeger is an extremely agile single seat biplane usually equipped with an Lycoming 235 or 290.

A good looking and good flying airplane it did never end up being built in any larger numbers. Partly because its complicated construction but mainly because the ground handling of the aircraft is really mean. Just read a old post by Robert Stauber:

“The following is the saga of the a/c homebuilt that used to live here an Nevada County. It was the cutest little biplane, a single seater. It was bright red with Maltese crosses on the wings and fuselage. It was named DER JAEGER, which I am sure you know is German for the hunter. It was owned by our local a&p AI type Leo Lake, who perished in a hangar fire in oct of 1994. Leo was a pretty good tailwheel type pilot who flew a Starduster Two and a Cessna 170 a. He was probably not quite as good as he thought that he was, but who is? He was flummoxed by the jaeger. Everytime he flew it we got out the video cameras so that when he ended up off of the runway we might have a chance to sell the videos to America’s stupidest videos etc. This a/c reduced some very good pilots to tears. Even Ken Lynch who had learned to fly in a Jenny (I’m not making this up) test flew it and pronounced it the most evil handling a/c that he had ever flown, now Ken was an FBO before the war two and had scads of time in Luscombes and other types of bite your butt type a/c. We have a Navy N3N-3 on the field and Ken flew it when he was almost eighty years old. He landed our local Cristen Eagle without any trouble, but when he tried the Jaeger it was trip through the weeds time on the two landings that he made. He said that it flew well but that it should be carried piggyback into the air and retrieved the same way to be safe.”

Some say it is because the aircraft usually had a pretty hefty toe out as default but even with this corrected the jaeger never becomes friendly on the ground.

Der Jaeger ends up being one aircraft I like looking at but never really want to own..

Span: (upper) 20ft (Lower) 16ft
length: 17ft
Gross: 1095lbs
usefull load: 350lbs
Vne: 145mph
Cruise: 133mph
Stall: 54mph