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It's 2010
and I've had a lot of fun over
the 26 years that I've been involved in experimental aircraft. I guess the
bug bit me when Rutan first came out with his "plastic" airplane
around the 1980's. I tried to buy a South Florida drug confiscation
Vari-eze but the feds running the auction were more corrupt than the drug
runners. Then the sexy little Q2 came out with fantastic performance
numbers, could be built in a garage in a few months, an amateur pilot could fly
it... Most of the kit airplane folks back then were making up data and really
stretching the truth bad! Problem is that I didn't care for Volkswagen
engines at all. Then the Q200 came out and fit what I was looking for.
After a quick negotiation my kit was purchased from Clio Crop Care in SC and a
pile of foam, fiberglass and glue arrived on my doorstep late Dec 1983. I
was a 29 year old kid, had 50 hours in Cessna 150's and was ready to build my
high performance airplane! I joined the local EAA chapter 47 in St. Pete
Florida and proudly announced what I was planning. The whole place burst
into laughter! The old timers there had seen many like me before, many
that either never completed their aircraft or later died in an airplane.
None the less they got in there and helped me complete my project and trained me
to fly tail draggers.
If you are interested...More about me. In high school and early college I repaired TV's after school.
My Dad was a sound man at the local Coliseum and ran a side TV repair business.
I worked with him a while and then got a paying job at a small town Gambles
store. Back then people loved their TV's and those hot tubes made for a
very unreliable piece of electronics. The TV repair business was good and
I did pretty well at it too. I had applied to the University of
Wisconsin Madison and planned to go for Electronic Engineering. At that
time my family was building a house and had an engineer nailing shingles on our
roof, engineering wasn't exactly in demand. I had rebuilt a
Sunbeam Tiger
sports car and a Triumph GT6 and worked my way from a Suzuki X6 Hustler to a
Honda 450 and then to a Honda 750 motorcycle. I guess I was one of the few
kids at college with a Sports car and a motorcycle. The first day of
Engineering class
I was in this huge auditorium where the professor said, look to your left, look
to your right, if you graduate, they won't be here. Ya, right, party time
for the next two years but don't you know he was right, they guys on my left and
right were gone already! A few years later was graduation and I started
interviewing. I had 13 interviews, traveled from CA, to NY, to Boston, to
Tampa, had a great time on these free trips. Engineering was hot!
I chose an Electrical Engineering job for Raytheon in the Boston area which was beautiful and has so
much history. Raytheon offered me a decent job and gave me a raise even
before I started which I thought was nice of them!. We took motorcycle trips into the
Berkshires, Vermont, and NH. Basically had a good time. I was
introduced to my wife Liz by a co-worked and we long distance dated for a year. I'd drive
to NY city and we'd go to a Broadway play or shop on Canal Street. As I had
Mass plates on my car I could park anywhere for free. Sure, I'd get a
ticket but so what, Mass and NY didn't talk back then. After 5 years
of living outside the Boston area we chose to move to Florida and have been here
sense 1981.
Flying, and snorkeling the coral reefs of the Caribbean are our favorite
hobbies. We've flown the Q many times to the Bahamas and Florida Keys.
100 miles over water is interesting but so far we haven't had the rough engine
jitters!
Back in 1995? we purchased a Volmer Amphibian in a partnership
with Gary Read. After a few years I bought Gary out and flew the Volmer a
bunch out of Tampa Bay. One day the FAA called me up and told me that I
was flying too low over the bird sanctuary by Tiera Verda. Well we were
practicing glassy water landings and I had an instructor on board. I
explained to the guy that you have to fly low to land. He said but it's a
bird sanctuary, I said that it is not even on the chart to which he replied that
he had looked it up and I was right. What a looser.
The Volmer was falling apart from the salt water so I sold it to a
guy in GA. I have no idea where it went from there.
Years later I got a great deal on an Osprey 2 amphibian and bought it. I
spent many years working on it and then saw some videos of it on the water.
This was an ok machine for lakes but not so much for our open bays and salt
water so I finally decided to ditch the project. Made some money on the
deal so it wasn't all bad. If you count the hours on the project I
probably made about 0.25 per hour.
I now work for Honeywell and am pretty happy
there. We build various gyro based navigation systems and the one I work
on is for the Army GMLRS missile. They pay us for patents so I filed 13 so
far! Hey, it's good side money.
more to follow...
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