I’m 25, and I have a total of about 78 hours. I started flying when I was 13. I’m a lifetime EAA member. I would’ve been in that picture in the first post, but I now have a full-time job. I’ve struggled to juggle home building with flying because I enjoy both so much.
• spent about 4 years getting my PPL SEL because I kept running out of money. Making $7.25 an hour isn’t even enough to fly through the summer.
• I got insanely lucky with my instructor. $30 per hour of instruction. I pay $70 now. I fly even less than when I was in HS because I can’t afford it on a grown up budget, and I’m flying gliders now.
• the DPE my instructor usually used retired the month before I needed to take the checkride, which set me back an entire year because my flight instructor spends his winters in HI.
• I got side tracked by a Long-EZ project. Along the way, I realized I hated working with foam and fiberglass. It is also not as cost effective as aluminum. This is still the worst financial blunder of my life, and I hope nothing tops it.
• Met Burt Rutan at Oshkosh 2015, who told me my long-EZ project was an antique. It was the stake through the heart. Oh well, at least he signed my hat.
• I spent 300 hours in 9 months as a graduate student working on a CX4. This is a plane that even a grad student can afford. Hats off the mr. Thatcher.
• Looked for a used Aerovee to put on the CX4. A guy was parting his engine and had signed a deal with Sonex to not use that serial number. He offered to brush off the S/N and sell me the plate. He also wanted more for the used conn rods than it cost me to buy new ones from CB.
• Found an incredibly good deal on a wrecked Sonex. I’m seriously blessed. The Aerovee needs a full rebuild, but the entire overhaul is only $4k. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This individual made the single largest push for my ability to participate in GA than anyone else, and he’ll probably never realize this.
• I got my LSRM-A in January of 2022. Thanks, Brian. This was money well spent for once. Learned in the class that the FAA now no longer considered time spent building a plane as time towards an A&P, which no one had bothered to tell me, so I started looking for an airframe to put back in the air.
• A member of my local chapter outbid me $1k for a Sonex project and then sold it about 1 month later after not touching it. I can’t compete with scalpers.
• A very kind EAA chapter president and A&P offered me his 601XL airframe for a very reasonable price. He lost the logs before I came to pick it up, asked if I had stolen them, but then found the logs in the house while I awkwardly waited there. He forgot to include a corvair motor Mount that was promised with the sale. When I noticed and asked where it was, he told me I was a smart-a** with an attitude and told me to leave. Oh, and he took my $100 deposit. This of course all came after him telling me that a personal check would be fine before changing his mind and requiring at least half payment in cash. I think he had early stages of dementia.
• That failed sale forced me to apologize to a person I was intending to buy a corvair (recommended by WW), who actually treated me very well. I felt awful and had to apologize while explaining why I had to back out of the deal. WW has also been one of the few helpful people, and I’ve never even met the guy in real life.
• Took a real job to actually afford planes. Had to move somewhere where flying is out of my budget, and now I’m away from my CX4 project.
• Designing an LSA on the computer since I don’t have access to my machine shop (yes, that’s right, we’re capable) back home. Getting laughed at, insulted (I’m an engineer with a physics background), and lectured by people who dreamed of a 200+ mph motor glider (I can’t make this stuff up). I ordered the ASTM standards yesterday because yes, I’m dead serious about what I do.
The hobby will only die if people continue being jerks. I haven’t exactly had a great experience with the aviation community. I know there are some great people out there. My path wasn’t very straight, so take it with a grain of salt, but I’m under 50, and that was my experience in GA.
Thanks,
Connor
