I Imagine a golden age when you can fly on your own wings, soaring in all the seasons and at your whim into the deepest blue sky. Just so: In a ship I have built with my own hands I will take in the beauty of the clouds. If once seen only from the ground […]
I I’d ordered the horizontal stabilizer kit, the slats kit, and the flaperons kit from Zenith right before I drove out to Green Cove Springs to meet William Wynne. I got an email from Zenith proclaiming my kits had been shipped and would arrive late March / early April. Then, on March 13th, Texas Governor […]
I It’s like this: 1) Physics tests airworthiness, 2) Airworthiness is a measure of craftsmanship, 3) Craftsmanship can be measured against aircraft construction standards. This was true for the Wright brothers and it was true for me and my Zenith CH750 project. The difference was that I was taking advantage of over one hundred years […]
I The Zenith CH750 plans arrived Nov 27th. It was cold and rainy outside but these plans were like gleaming beams that dazzled my world. I got ridiculously excited and thumbed through them repeatedly. It would be work. A lot of work. A change comes over you. Organization was required. More than I had mustered […]
I I turned the plane onto final so that the runway was directly in front of us. We were aligned near perfect with the centerline. I stabilized the descent and watched the runway moving up toward us. I was so concentrated and cool headed that the thrill of it was almost lost. We crossed over […]
It was the first day of January, 2020. Back in August, 2019, I’d found myself sitting on a horse in a cold, driving rain. We were on top of a barren hill in the Scottish Highlands. A singularly unprepared Texan, I wore only a light rain jacket, a t-shirt, jeans, and “waterproof” riding boots. They […]
I It’s a shocking thing — an awesome kind of vertigo — gravity’s sudden upset. “I figure it’s time to demonstrate spins,” my flight instructor said. She pulled the yoke back and the plane started to climb, and without further explanation she smoothly pulled power. The engine idled back. I watched the airspeed indicator start […]
V It was a tough Corvair core. At one time I’d had three, but I’d sold them for a pittance. The first one I’d disassembled came apart with relative ease, almost as though it had been pulled from a running car for an overhaul. I had reasons: “I’ll never fly again.” “I’ll never build a […]
I It must be some kind of weird curse — random in your face reality when you decide to do something that has more element of risk to it than just sitting on a couch watching TV. Like, why was it that whenever I got interested in flying and then did something about it was […]
I love air powered tools. In my little airplane single engine land construction hanger, when I fired up the air wrench, that inimitable sound meant one thing: Making progress toward an ambitious goal of flying the United States. As many States as I could. In an aircraft I had built myself. Low. And slow. Like, […]