Wayne had a vision for a very simple, easy to build, fun to fly aircraft with a strut-braced mid wing and a very light 2-cycle single cylinder engine up front. He worked with test pilot Lowell Farrand and others, fine-tuning the design until they had the prototype Mini-Max, very similar to the 1100R flying today. It's boxy design was very simple to build and it flew great. It had no bad manners and did exactly what the the pilot asked of it.

After some more careful study Wayne determined a traditional tractor engine design would be safer, and a wood & fabric structure had the highest strength to weight ratio. He developed a few early designs for Fisher Aircraft before starting out on his own.

Ison Aircraft started selling plans and kits, which proved to be quite popular when word got out about how great these little planes flew. The company soon expanded and became TEAM (Tennessee Engineering And Manufacturing) Aircraft. They developed new models, including the Mini-Max 103 ultralight, open and closed cockpit "Sport" models, the high-wing Hi-Max and the VW-powered V-Max. All these aircraft shared a few things in common: wood and fabric construction, simple to build and fun to fly. TEAM Member Larry Isreal developed the Eros. With it powerful fully cowled engine, attractive canopy and turtledeck, wingtips wheel pants and other quality details, it became the flagship of the company, for pilots wanting a little more than the basic Mini-Max.

In 2003 John Graber, David Trump and Thinus Debeer bought the company and renamed it "JDT Mini-Max" after their first names. Eventually Thinus left the group to pursue other business interests. John, based in the Nappanee, IN airport, was responsible for customer service, fabrication and packing kit orders. David provided capital and R&D in Tasmania, Australia.

One of the projects started by Wayne and continued by the JDT group was an all-wood open-air plane, similar to the AirBike. The new AeroMax is unique not only in how it looks but also in how the parts are manufactured. Using a CNC Laser, the plywood parts are precisely cut to within a few thousands of an inch, and laser-marked with the part number, orientation and mating fasteners. Flight testing has shown the new AeroMax is just as much fun to fly as the old Airbike.

John Graber made a lot of friends over the years and helped a lot of customers, but decided it was time to retire in the summer of 2012. Then David Trump reorganized the company into a lean manufacturing organization called "Team Mini-Max LLC", with some new people: Andrew Mackey to help with management, Kevin Thorp for graphics and web design. There were some familiar names on the new Team: Lowel Farrand and Larry Isreal will provide builder support. Those of you who frequent the Lonesome Buzzards forum will recognize Phill Knox, responsible for metal fabrication and laser-cutting, and David "theecoop" Cooper, in charge of day-to-day operations (receiving, cutting stock crating kits, shipping) in the new Niles, Michigan location. David Trump was still in charge of R&D, working with lead engineer David Kyle from their facility in Australia. David's brother Frank Trump ran the sales office in New Zealand and Kerry-Lee Krige, based in South Africa, helped with marketing.

At one point, David noted a budding aircraft homebuilding movement in China. This led to the opening of Mini-Max China, headed by Byron Trump and James Yan.

Later Wayne added a welded open steel fuselage to the standard wing and tail and the AirBike was born. This open-air design proved to be quit popular, so they developed the 2 (very snug) seat Tandem AirBike. The AirBikes sold very well, and like the entire Mini-Max product line, had an excellent safety record.

Unfortunately one pilot crashed his Airbike and sued the company, claiming the aircraft had a design flaw. Of course TEAM Mini-Max won the lawsuit by proving the AirBike structure is designed to meet or exceed all published design loads. However the plaintiff filed again and Wayne thought it was about time to retire so he sold the company (minus the Airbike line).

In 2025, Team Mini-Max was acquired by AeroKits USA out of Sheridan, Wyoming. We have now become Mini-Max USA with the plan of carrying on Wayne Ison’s vision of bringing aviation to the masses without breaking the bank.

We will be offering most of Ison’s Mini-Max models in different levels of completion with the goal of offering Plans, full aircraft supply kits, pre built parts to speed up your build, and eventually, 51% kits. We are also working on starting a builder assist center to help builders get their Mini-Maxes up in the air!

We will also be working on re-building a community around the Mini-Max series of aircraft and putting together fly-ins as soon as possible. Be sure to sign up with us to keep you up to date on what is new with the Mini-Max USA Brand!