SHOP TALK
HANDS ON
it takes so long for any of it to look like an
airplane. It’s difficult to look down the
road and see that the building process has
an end. It seems to go on forever.
When a 51-percent kit shows up at
your house and you pop the crate open
in your driveway, most of the contents
look like airplane parts: wings, fuselage,
seats, etc. You can spread them out on
your driveway and actually see how the
parts relate to one another, and the effect
on your psyche is huge! Yeah, I can do
this! I can fit Tab A into Slot B. You’re
pumped because the challenge doesn’t
appear overwhelming. Also, while you’re
in the process of building, any time you
want, you can climb into it and make airplane noises while imagining the flights
you’re going to take. That alone will keep
you going.
Actually, anyone who completes any
airplane—whether plansbuilt, kitbuilt, an
antique restoration, or otherwise—gets
my abject admiration. Seeing a project of
that size to the end says a lot about the
individual involved. However, those who
take a roll of paper and make it into a flying machine totally blow me away. They
are a special breed with a different way of
thinking, and not everyone can, or should,
go that route when building an airplane.
A quick note here before we get
going: I am a hard-core plansbuilt guy.
Every single thing I build, from hot rods
to rifles to knives to airplanes to the
shelving in the hall closet, has to be done
from scratch. No store-bought parts or
kits. No hired guns. Like so many others
of the plansbuilt persuasion, something
inside of me won’t allow me to do anything other than take pure raw material
and craft something out of it that makes
me proud.
So, when I start talking against plansbuilding and in favor of kits, that means
I’m going against my natural impulses.
I’m doing that because I’ve been up to
my neck in homebuilding for a long, long
time (my first EAA convention was
Rockford 1966; only missed one since),
and I’ve found that the most important
thing a person can do in terms of seeing
an airplane project through to the end is
to deal with the realities of the project
before he starts. To view them in the
harshest light possible. One of those realities is the massive amount of time even a
kit will take, and a kit is light-years faster
to finish than scratchbuilding the same
design. And this brings us to a leading
question: Why are you building the airplane in the first place? The answer to
this determines whether you should
scratchbuild or kitbuild.
There is nothing that
even slightly resembles
an airplane part in sight.
MAJOR MOTIVATION
If you’re building the airplane mostly
because you want to fly it, don’t even
think about plansbuilding. Forget it, for a
lot of reasons. One of the major reasons is
that it’s so easy to get discouraged because
And then there’s the plansbuilt air-
plane: Let’s say it’s a Bearhawk, because
that’s one of the designs that can be built
from plans, from a 51-percent kit, or any-
where in between. When you go
plansbuilt and the materials package for
your Bearhawk-to-be is delivered, the
only crate is about 4 inches thick and 4
feet by 12 feet. Those are the wings—and
cowling, floorboards, and fuel tanks. The
only other item that will come off the
truck is a long mailing tube. It’ll be about 1
foot in diameter and maybe 12 feet long.
The entire fuselage is in that tube! And
the tail, and the landing gear, and the
engine mount, and the control sticks. You
get the picture.
