Builders,
I was visiting EAA chapter 534 in central Florida yesterday, looking at Zenith airframes which they acquired. In the paperwork was the logs and photos of the late Bill McManus, he was one of my earliest Zenith builders.
The photos brought back memories of him; On the surface he was a gruff chain smoking curmudgeon with a salty vocabulary, but if you spent the afternoon with him, and were secure enough to not let the cover tell the whole story inside the book, he was a real character, He was enough of a craftsman and motivated enough to build a 601XL in a carport next to his mobile home in just 16 months,
Back then, Gus Warren was our test/demo pilot, and he gave more than 100 people a demo flight in my 601XL. Gus’s father was a legendary CFI, and schooled his son rigorously in the art and science of being a good aviator, with a sharp focus on fundamental flying skills ……. It surprised Gus, when he turned over the controls of the 601XL in the demo flight, virtually every single ‘pilot’ tried to fly the plane without the slightest input on the rudder. I clearly remember that McManus was the exception, and when we later asked him about it, it turned out that almost everything he knew about planes came from a lifetime of flying Radio Controlled planes. I found it ironic that 1/3 the people who went on the demo flights wanted to tell you about their intention to fly IFR or discuss the stability as if they were Kelly Johnson, but none of them were capable of basic stick and rudder flying like the gruff guy huffing on Marlboros and dropping and occasional F-bomb. Go figure.
By the time we bought our Zenith Kit, I had already been working with Corvair flight engines for 13 years, but the decision to build the first Corvair powered Zenith brought us a flood of new builders, Bill Mcmanus in the first wave. He is long gone now, But looking at the 19 year old picture of me running his engine on my test stand, its a reminder that I’m here for the long run.
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Bills engine doing a break in run on my test stand 19 years ago. Yes, I looked like that once.
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Bills 601XL nearing completion. notice he painted it outside with the neighbors 25′ away. The guy was determined. The black lines were to his BRS chute.
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His airworthiness card was in the papers. Bill was a new pilot when he was building, and was unaware that weasels in the FAA aeromedical department had just argued to gain access to VA medical records without the permission nor notification of the individual veteran. Bill was a Vietnam vet and found out the FAA wanted to question things he and most Veterans believed were doctor-patient confidential. If you are new to flying and you encounter a pilot with a particularly low opinion of the Aeromedical FAA, understand it might have been formed by the FAA pulling stunts like accessing VA records without notification.
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The man himself, with his creation. Blue skies and tailwinds, RIP Bill, you were a real individual, and quite a character.
WWjr.
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