Edward Stinson in 1926 formed Stinson aircraft with a facility at Willow Run in Detroit to build aircraft.

Southern Cross Aviation Ltd was formed in Toowoomba, QLD, in 1957 to explore the feasibility of designing and manufacturing a light aircraft in Australia to compete against the American imports of Cessna and Piper.

In 1975 the Research and Development Department of the Societe de Construction D’Avions de Tourisme et D’Affaires in France (a subsidiary of Aerospatiale) initiated the design of a new series of touring monoplanes.

The Miles M.4A Merlin was an enlarged development of the Miles M.3 Falcon series designed to accommodate a pilot and four passengers.

Despite the appellation ‘Aiglet’, the J-5F series was not derived from the J-1B Aiglet. The J-5F was basically a J-5 with a widened and strengthened fuselage to permit the Aiglet Trainer to be fully aerobatic, the only Auster to be fully certified in this role.

The J-5G was a more powerful variant of the J-5B and had some strengthening to allow the installation of a more powerful engine, this involving the fitting of several extra tubular front members.

The designation J-5H was applied to one aircraft (VH-ADS) and the designation J-5GL was applied to a J-5G which (ZK-CXA) was rebuilt in New Zealand to take a Lycoming engine. The J-5H was registered in Australia. This aircraft was built as a J-5B (VH-ADS - c/n 2047) and was imported

The Alpine series was introduced to the Auster range in 1955, being a development specially for operations from high-altitude airfields in hot climates.

In 1950 an Autocrat airframe was converted by Auster to J-1B configuration, being fitted with a Gipsy Major I engine and a larger horn balanced rudder.

The three-seat Auster J-5 Autocrat was basically a more powerful version of the J-1 Autocrat but, unlike the similarly engined Aiglet and Alpha, the J-5 did not have the larger vertical tail surfaces provided on those aircraft to compensate for the extra power.

Following the success of the three-seat Autocrat, Auster’s chief designer, R E Bird used the experience gained from the design of the Alpha, which did not proceed to production in any numbers, and came up with a four-seater of similar specifications.

During the latter stages of World War II the Taylorcraft design team decided to build a lower powered version of the Auster Mk 5 and a prototype, originally known as the Taylorcraft Auster Mk 5 Series J-1 Autocrat, was built and flown.

Introduced in 1950, the prototype J-1B Aiglet was a converted Autocrat with a Gipsy Major 1 engine and a larger horn-balanced rudder.

The Andrews A-1 is considered to be the pioneer of post-war amateur-constructed aircraft in New Zealand, being built to Certificate of Airworthiness standard during the 1950s by C G Andrews of Wellington, who was then an aeronautical engineer employed by the New Zealand Civil Aviation Department.

he Model 7 Champion series was introduced to the Aeronca range in 1946 immediately after World War II, as a light training and touring monoplane.