Anytime.
Anywhere.
Anyway.
HANDS ON
HOMEBUILDER’S CORNER
Print, online or mobile, 24/7,
we’re here with everything
that keeps you flying.
5SBEF;";1MBOF;DPN;;r;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
SPA
aviation. Many tents were assembled,
campgrounds prepared, supplies for food
delivered, and the evening programs filled
with great speakers and polka music; good
times were had by all. Looking forward to
today, I am proud that the convention site
(with some 900 acres of land), EAA’s headquarters offices, and the museum are all
paid for with no government funds.
But homebuilding wasn’t something
new when we started EAA. There was a lot
of it before and after the Wright brothers
flew in 1903 and up through the early 1930s
as well. In going through my library
recently, I picked up the June 1932 issue of
National Geographic magazine. An article
titled “Flying the World” by Gladys M. Day
caught my eye. Her husband, Charles Day,
had recently retired, and while sitting at
the dinner table one evening discussing
what they might do, he, being a pilot, dis-
cussed flying around the United States. She
said “Why not around the world?”
Before retiring, he had been an airplane
designer, and they thought why not build
their own airplane. The airplane was built
in an automobile paint shop in Paterson,
New Jersey. They completed it in the
spring of 1931 and shipped it to England.
(Photos of the airplane show it to be a bit
larger than a Stearman, side-by-side open
cockpit.) Departing from London, their
flights covered 1 6,000 miles, visiting many
cities such as Paris, Berlin, Istanbul,
Baghdad, Bangkok, Hanoi, and cities along
the way to Shanghai, where the airplane
was then shipped to California. From
there, the Days flew it back to Newark,
New Jersey.
