As I am sure many of you know, Bob Gieseke was a true mentor and inspiration
for both me and my brother Doug. After Bob’s passing, Doug was gifted Bob’s
2003 Bear. Wow, what a plane! Doug has been flying a version of this plane
for going on twenty years now. But, there has never actually been a set of plans
for it. Many years ago Doug and I went over to Bob’s house and measured every
aspect of Bob’s plane we could think of. This filled an entire page or more of legal
size paper. Needless to say, Doug has had gobs of success with this series of planes.

Fast forward to 2023. At that time I didn’t have a plane that I was really that happy
with, yet I wanted to fly at the 2023 Team Trials. I asked Doug if I could use Bob’s
plane. He thought it was a good idea. After a few flights I quickly realized this is
the best flying plane I’d ever flown. I put a fresh PA75 I had recently acquired from
Phil Nickles in it. With 20 practice flights I finished 9th at the TT. Overall, I was
pretty happy with that.

I had already started building an 03 Bear for myself, and since I had the original in
my garage to serve as a template I decided to get serious about drawing plans for it.
As of today (1/8/25) I have finished the drawing/inking and will be completing the
lettering soon. Bob used a lost foam jig from Bob Hunt, so I used that to draw every
rib and half rib. This plan has the same numbers as Bob’s plane. The only change I’ve
made is wing mounted landing gear. Bob used a custom made set of carbon fiber
fuse mounted landing gear that had a hump molded into it to clear the tuned pipe.
As this would be impossible to obtain now I elected to show wing mounted gear.

The plan is on two pages, with the page showing the wing being very large at 66” wide.
Due to these reasons, this will be a fairly expensive plan; probably about $25-$30.
For those who may be interested, feel free to post or message me here, or send me
an email at: ultrahobby@cs.com. That way, I’ll have an idea of how many copies to
have made.

Thanks, Steve Moon