How Good are you? Would you fly in a plane you built?

Apropos of nothing but some kool pictures in the pictures posting thread.

If given the time and funds to build your own airplane, would you do it and would you dare fly it?

If being truthful, I would have to answer NO.

I would answer a big NO as well. That's coming from a machinist/welder/fabricator!

Just too many things to go wrong. If I forget to tighten a bolt on my car, I wreck it and more than likely walk away. I forget to tighten a bolt on an airplane, I crash and am goo on what ever I happened to hit.

Yes, but this assumes it would be a pretty simple plane and I already had a fair amount of flight-time under my belt. From what I've seen of home-built planes, there are a number of test flights you do before you really get off the ground at a significant altitude.

Hell... I rowed a kayak I helped build in the Schuylkill river in Philly years ago. If something had failed while I was out in the middle of the river, the chances of survival (even as a decent swimmer and with a life jacket) would have been slim.

Yes, but only once, and probably into the ground.

an R/C one, sure!

I've learned over time that aircraft mechanics are certainly not super heroes. I teach automotive and I even have a former military jet engine mechanic going through my class on GI bill right now. I wouldnt trust him to build me a plane any more than i trust myself.

On a related note, i never seem to fully 'trust' a car until i've done major surgery on it and been familiarized with its workings. I would trust a plane i built more than one that any other single dude built unless i had spent as much time seeing that other guy's work as just building the plane.

I won't go skydiving because i dont want to spend the time verifying that the people who packed my chute are worth a E36 M3. I don't ride travelling carnival rides because i dont know the guys who take them apart and put them together 15 times/year. One of my instructor coworkers used to work on rides at a theme park and had a coworker tear his finger off doing something obviously stupid.

I have a friend who works for Boeing Seattle and i hear a lot from him. My mother used to do payroll for plane mechanics down here at Port of San Antonio.

I know too much about the people who build planes to assume they are any better than i am. I would be just as comfortable flying a plane i built as any other low-production hand-built plane.

This is the picture that got the thought into my head. Someone built this kit and now flys it like he stole it.

My imagination is way to vivid to let me get away with doing this.

You can pull a DD to the curb. btdt

You can pull a race car to the curb. btdt

You cannot pull an airplane to the curb. not goin' there

So, no.

yeah, i'd give it a go. It's not so much about being good - but I'd test the crap out of it

Fly? Yes. Land? No.

Even among homebuilts, the vast majority of crashes come from pilot error, not the airplane. Redundancy is everything.

Yes.

Also, you need to choose a good design. Some are less forgiving than others, both in terms of building and flying. I know a few people who have built various RVs successfully. They are a pretty standard, conservative design with a large builder network and lots of support.

Yes. As I said when I posted the above picture, I spent last winter and most of this one rebuilding two wings for an Aeronca Champ. Many, many hours; some requiring more than one person when moving this stuff around and squaring things up.

Better question:

Would you buy an unfinished project not knowing the skills of the first owner? Bwahahaha....

Dan

http://www.barnstormers.com/

I have a cousin who's been building his own plane for years. I think it's come to the point where he's probably never going to finish it and fly it, he just likes the building part of the process.

Hell no!

stuart in mn wrote: I have a cousin who's been building his own plane for years. I think it's come to the point where he's probably never going to finish it and fly it, he just likes the building part of the process.

Why does this shoe seem to fit me so well?

Working on a car that's used on track has some similarities with working on a plane. Yes, you're not going to fall out of the sky if something breaks, but there are plenty of potentially fatal failure possibilities on track. While I'm comfortable racing the car I work on, I take the risks seriously and have a good record of very few significant failures.

I'd like to build an ultralight with a Zodiac on the bottom. I would fly it, but not much more than ten feet above the water.

A sufficiently simple and slow plane, like an ultralight, sure. Something small like a stunt plane or Cessna-esque, yeah I'd give it some careful test hops over the runway and work my way up to flying. Anything bigger/more complicated than that...no.

my cousin built one and flys it all the time. it has to meet specs and is inspected so its not like buying a morgan kit car and building it to race with.

Hell yeah I would. I've wanted to build an ultralight for a long time.

Absolutely. I intend to build one some day. I grew up going to the world's largest airshow in Oshkosh WI which had lots of amateur built airplanes in attendance. My stepfather built this RV6

I also fly a Leadplane for the USFS

My plan is to build a Factory Five '33 Hotrod first, then something like an Avid Flyer or Kitfox. I'd like to be able to operate out of backcountry dirt strips or sand bars. Flying a 250 knot airplane for a living makes all of the $100k aircraft out there look really slow. If you're going to go slow, go really slow. Nothing I could remotely afford would compare to the 3 million dollar aircraft I fly for a living, so my sense of how long a flight from Redmond to Boise should take is a little skewed. Commercial airline travel is sooooo inexpensive comparatively that I just can't justify it at the moment.

The real advantage to a homebuilt airplane is that you can have a new airplane for a fraction of the cost of a certified aircraft. Also the maintenance costs are significantly lower since you don't always have to pay a certified mechanic to do the work.

I will and have in a Zenith 701 that I helped the local EAA chapter out with here and there.

(sadly I wasn't home for the first flight which is where this picture is from.)

I also used to get a ride along for the functional check flights after my line put together an aircraft from a heavy C or heavy D check. Those were generally exciting.

I was doing a tail inspection when I took this one and that's my used seat cushion for when I had to lay down and scrap sealant or putz around in the interior.

(nothing real cool just always fun to look at pictures and consider how big that facility actually was)

I suppose it's a little unfair coming from me since that's what I do for a living. I also ride along with guys that do homebuilts for aerobatics every chance I get. If I'm given then chance to work on something antique and cool I'll do the work for a ride sometimes.

Once upon a time I would have said yes, but I now have to be honest about my skill set and patience. If I had the ability of some of you it would still be yes, but knowing myself I have to say no.