Dale Kramer is an inventor and entrepreneur. At the age of 20, Dale designed and flew the Lazair ultralight aircraft (Wikipedia). As a result, Dale left university halfway through his 3rd year of aerospace engineering at the University of Toronto, to see if he could commercialize the Lazair. The Lazair was an unqualified success and over the next 6 years he produced and marketed over 1200 aircraft, employing as many as 30 people (Financial Post Article).

From these beginnings, Dale branched into many diverse areas and has amassed 8 patents. These range from a toy glider to the Hystar heavy lift airship (he produced the flying examples featured at Expo 86), a robotic golf cart and a compact disc storage unit.

In the mid 1980’s Dale began a long and fruitful relationship with John Deere Welland Works. Starting a new company, Kramer Concepts Inc., he began designing and building specialized production equipment for John Deere including bending brakes and presses. This led to an opportunity to enter the powder paint business. In the late 1980’s, Dale purchased and installed a 10,000 square foot powder painting system and began painting all the John Deere “Gator” utility vehicles. At its peak in 2001 it employed 30 people and had sales of over $4 million dollars per year.

Dale has developed extensive skills in many areas and is the quintessential “Jack of all Trades”. He also has experience in injection mold design, production, and part production through his father’s injection molding company. He has also designed, built molds and produced parts in composite materials and vacuum formed thermoplastics. He has been programming computers for 35 years and has extensive experience in data acquisition and machine control. He has even gutted his CNC mill and rebuilt it with modern servo drivers and Mach3 software.

In 2011 Dale designed an electric motor and battery management system for the Lazair aircraft he designed in 1979. With this eLazair he became the first person in history to fly an manned electric powered aircraft off of water. The amphibious Electric Lazair was showcased at Oshkosh annual EAA air show and was very successful winning the Outstanding Ultralight Award and the Antique Ultralight Champion Award (EAA Video).

One of Dales recent projects involves extracting energy from wind at altitude. As an initial stage for developing this device he wrote a very comprehensive computer program that analyses wind data from around the world (WindMapperPro). He has also written another weather related program that many glider pilots use regularly (BMapper).

Dale was born in Ontario, Canada and is a permanent resident of the USA, residing in Inverness, FL with his wife Carmen Kramer. Carmen is co-founder and owner of Custom Manufacturing, Inc. (ArchivalBoxes). CMI has been providing custom made book boxes for rare and damaged books to 300 university libraries, archives, and museums since its incorporation in 1990. Recently Dale re-designed the tool changing mechanism for CMI’s automated box making machine. A university in the Netherlands requested this re-design for their box making machine to improve their reliability and productivity. Currently Dale is re-designing CMI’s box/object measuring device used in over 100 universities, archives and institutions. The new device incorporates blue tooth and android technology as well provides increased accuracy and portability. The device has been engineered by Dale from the ground up including designing the custom circuit boards and measurement apparatus.

Along the way, Dale has had an active piloting career, including flying competitively in sailplanes. Dale has flown in two World Gliding Championships, won many US regionals and has won a US National Championship. He holds numerous Canadian and US national and state records. He has spent many hours soaring the Allegheny ridges, including a 1000 mile US national record flight. His 40+ years of being an aviator has given Dale a significant amount of valuable knowledge and experience.


Achievements
- Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Diplome D’Honneur, awarded for contributions to the progress of Aeronautics.
- The Roméo Vachon Award, awarded for outstanding displays of initiative, ingenuity and practical skills in the solution of challenging problems in aeronautics.
- Manning $25,000 Award for innovative achievement.
- Outstanding Young Canadian Award for exceptional achievements in his field, specifically providing employment locally and contribution to the excellence in Ontario technology.
- Examples of the Lazair ultralight are now in 3 museums, including the Smithsonian.
- Dale Kramer excels in his recreational sport of competition sailplane racing. He holds many of the highest honors in this sport. He has flown record flights. He was twice the Canadian National Champion and once the US Sport Class Champion. He has competed twice at the World Championships. Dale earned his glider license at age 15 and his power pilot’s license at age 17.
- In 2019, Canada Post (issued a stamp) in honour of the Lazair.
Patents:
US2011/0233325A1 Cargo Carrying Air Vehicle
5,334,905 Compact disc case
5,018,933 Device for transferring an invalid to and from an auto
D307,193 Air Vehicle
4,844,493 Remotely-controlled vehicle
4,685,640 Air vehicle
4,424,946 Lightweight aircraft
4,195,439 Toy flying object