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"Dorothy" - Choppergirl's $38 Volmer Jensen VJ-24W antique ultralight motor glider

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choppergirl

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Jan 30, 2015
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air-war.org
I read somewhere a Goat was $2000-$3000. Way to rich for my blood, to buy new alluminum and start from scratch cutting and drilling...

So far, I have $38 + gas, invested in my motor glider ;-) Already redesigning the cockpit area... with "L" channels... to make more sense to me and get rid of some of the Jensen "lets just add onto what we already have built" chartfunk.

Anyone close by, you are welcome to help out and participate this summer... why waste time forever dreaming, when you could be stripping paint and riveting... on something that is real, 40 feet wide, and you can already sit in ;-) I don't mind sharing. It'd be fun.

I'm kicking around the idea of crowd funding my plane, so that everybody interested in ending their career as dreamers, and becoming owners instead, could buy a share in my community owned airplane... 100 shares at $20, that would be plenty to buy dacron and a Kawasaki 340, 72" prop, and redrive, new rivets and AN bolts, misc. parts and new control cables, *PLUS* materials to build an enclosed trailer to store it permanently in and transport it *whereever*.

I'd write everybody's name on the plane, and even consider letting owners taxi and maybe fly it *if* they could demonstrate their basic coordination skills on say a motorcycle, or other vehicle first, and or flight simulator, with lots of tips from old flying elmers first, and they fully understood the theory of flight... worse they could do is crack it up and kill themselves, in which case we can always rebuild the plane... its a super slow docile flying go cart, after all... at least it appears to be in all the videos I have of it flying...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJL48s90smc

Is this a bad idea? Dunno. I still am musing about the idea. Its not like it hasn't been done before. My dad once bought 1/20th share in an EAA club Aerosport Scamp, and was one of only two pilots to fly it, the other, being the builder. He did 3 loops in it. I think glider clubs did community owned planes back in ancient history.

My personal challenge goal is to finish the plane entirely to flying state, for under $999. Not counting labor which I have all the time in the world. I'll probably run it up to $1200-$1500, *but* I'm going to snipe hard on ebay and scrounge hither and thither to come in under the $999 mark... just for bragging rights. ;-) New dacron is going to be a !@#$% to score on the cheap, I already know that going in. Maybe one night somebody's sailboat sail mysteriously... disappears ;-) Crazier things have happened, you know... those nightwitches... *just kidding* Not going to ruin someone else's baby to make my own dream, that would be très uncool...

Having just about the entire aluminum frame skeleton of the plane, and only having spent $38 of my budget, I am looking pretty good so far... scouring ebay every day to score a clean engine at a brutal price.
 
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