Builders:
This webpage now has more than 550 stories, here is a sample of older stories that you may have missed. here is a reminder of 6 of them. If you would like to see a list if 200 of the stories in categories, click on this link: 200 Stories of aircraft building. Below, just click on the colored ling to read the story.
——————————————-
On flying planes: New Pietenpol, Gary Boothe, Cool, Calif.
Above, Gary’s Piet at its first public display.
————————————
On Engines: World’s Strongest 3,000cc Corvair, built by Greg Crouchley
“At first glance you might not see the inner motor head. Greg’s normal stomping ground is in international manufacturing, and I have never seen him without a collared shirt on, even when he was building his engine at Corvair College #24. But this is camouflage for a guy who has a long background of getting his hands dirty.”
————————————-
On Installation components: Fuel Injection – Corvair flight engines reference page
“If I were to pick a single topic that new builders are interested in, but know little about the applications of, It would be Fuel Injection. This is a topic dominated by misconceptions and myths.”
————————————-
On Philosophy: James Stockdale – Philosophy
“Although I have read the biographies of several hundred aviators in the past 25 years, I can say without hesitation that James Stockdale had the most impressive personal code of all.”
——————————————
On Risk management: “If only someone had told him……”
” In almost every case, the unfortunate person at the center had been told, often previously warned more than once, but they chose to ignore the warnings or discount them for reasons that frequently seem hard to remember after the damage is done. It is not the lack of information, but the willful choice to ignore it that is at the root of trouble.“
——————————————
On Operations: Notes on Corvair flight engine oils.
“If a builder spends many hours talking about super special oils, and how they can fix everything in your life including your 401K, and later comes to a college but has no idea how to install a distributor and set timing, I am going to tease him about spending a lot of time thinking about synthetic oil, an answer in search of a valid question, when he needed to be reading about the fundamentals of his engine.”
————————————-
On Aviators: Robert Hedrix, Aviator, Nha Trang, 1975
“If you are reading this, and you are producing a plane with your own hands, then you are in the arena of flight. You will know it’s great challenges and rewards. You will struggle to make it right, to learn, to keep going when most others quit; You will feel fear, and overcome it before your first take off. The hours you spend aloft in your own creation will mark special days in your life long remembered when most are forgotten. Homebuilt planes can be very modest, but they are direct access to the human endeavor of flight, and through it you can understand some kinship with a man who’s “crowded hour” in the arena of flight came in April of 1975.”
Above is the image, published in 1975. Hedrix was not identified until 10 years later.
.