Engine Anderson and his Airplanes are a Fixture at Two Harbors Airport

If you ask ten people on the streets in Two Harbors where the air­port is, one or two are likely to respond, “We have an airport?”

But they all may know Jerry “Engine” Anderson, who has lived in Lake County for over four decades. He’s an approach­able, creative, seven­ty-something aviation devotee who lives on a lake with no public access and a couple dozen cabins deep in the Superior National Forest. He seems to enjoy all parts of his life, but you can tell it wouldn’t be com­plete without his two self-built airplanes, “Miss Chaos,” which he finished in 2002, and “Rooby,” which he completed in 2020.

His nickname, “Engine,” has been around as long as he can remember. “I was an inquisitive kid,” Anderson said. He gives his dad credit for the moniker that has stuck with him all these years and for his love of aviation.

“My dad flew almost every day in the 1930s to build flight hours to earn his certificate,” Anderson said. War impacts people in un­expected ways. After the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the elder Anderson en­tered the service. After the war, he never flew again.

But he understood internal combustion engines and willingly shared his knowledge with his curious son. When asked about the workings of a mo­tor, his dad answered all the questions and sketched out the work­ings, from cylinders and valves to carbure­tors and drive shafts.

“When I was about ten or eleven,” Ander­son said, “he brought home a crusty, sin­gle-cylinder Briggs and Stratton and told me to take it apart.” Then he told him to put it back togeth­er, and as he walked away, he said, “And it better work.”

“My father had an innate comprehension of all things mechani­cal and did his best to pass that on to me. As a result, I was fixing the neighbor’s lawn­mowers and outboard motors before I was a teenager,” Anderson said. “I have been En­gine for over 60 years, and it is way better than Gerald.”

The Two Har­bors-Helgeson Munic­ipal Airport opened its runways in 1939. It is one of the 3,000 gen­eral aviation airports in the USA. From its humble beginnings with a single paved and lit runway, the airport has evolved over the years. Nota­ble improvements in­clude constructing a new terminal building in 1962, extending the runway to its current length of 5,000 feet in 1995, and completing a significant renova­tion project in 2018. Today, it serves both general aviation and commercial air traffic.

The airport is also the home base for Chapter 1128 of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). Anderson has written the monthly newslet­ter for the chapter for over 30 years. “About 80 people get the newsletter,” he said. “About 25-30 are members of the chap­ter, and the rest are in­terested in aviation,”

The EAA was found­ed in 1953 in Milwau­kee, WI. The founders were pilots interested in building their own airplanes. EAA ex­panded its mission of growing participation in aviation to include antiques, classics, warbirds, aerobatic aircraft, ultralights, helicopters, and con­temporary manufac­tured aircraft. It is most well-known for its annual Oshkosh air show, EAA Air­Venture. This iconic event, held every July at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, WI, is a mecca for aviation enthusiasts, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, including Engine Anderson.

Anderson spent 35 hours in the air this summer. He mostly flies locally to observe the forest, lakes, and rivers. But in 2023, he flew to Oshkosh to show “Rooby,” the airplane he built in 2022. He says that was the furthest he’s flown.

Thanks to the lob­bying efforts of EAA, people who build their aircraft can also perform their own maintenance. This is a significant develop­ment as, unlike facto­ry-built aircraft, which require the expense of an FAA-certified me­chanic to perform even simple maintenance, people like Engine Anderson can change their own sparkplugs, reducing the cost and increasing the acces­sibility of aviation for enthusiasts.

Engine has built four airplanes over the years. The first two were so-called kits that he built with a partner. He built the last two, Miss Cha­os and Rooby, on his own, sourcing all the parts and pieces and using his own engi­neering to complete the projects.

Miss Chaos, fin­ished in 2002, is a single-seat aerobatic dynamo. “It’s thrill­ing to fly but not very relaxing,” Anderson said.

Rooby is a two-seat­er that Anderson en­joys flying because it’s stable and relax­ing. “It’s the last air­plane I’ll probably build,” Anderson said. “I get a big grin every time I take off in it,” he added. “I may even be laughing out loud.”