Where do airplanes come from, daddy?

This was written for a column on the RV Builder's Hotline

A week ago, I was cutting the aluminum stock that forms the rear spar doubler on my RV-7A's right wing (I had messed up the original). I was using my father's old Delta bandsaw. When I finished, I looked at the piece and said, "thanks, Dad." See, although my father died in 2004, he's helping me build this airplane.

Last summer, I cleaned out -- or started to -- the workshop in the barn that my Dad used for years and even though I've got a cheap old Harbor Freight bandsaw, his Delta bandsaw was still new enough, and well-made enough, that I figured I'd drive it back to Minnesota, clean it up, put a new blade on it, and make it part of the airplane factory in my garage.

It's only a 9" bandsaw -- less than the Harbor Freight model -- and I've only been able to find a 1/8" width blade for it, one that will cut aluminum -- not as sturdy as the 1/4" Harbor Freight blade -- but there's a big difference between the cheap model and the Delta: The Delta was his. And so was the tap-and-die set I used to make the flap pushrods. And so I like to think that my Dad made the flap pushrods and my Dad made the trim on the rear spar and to the extent I'm not the greatest builder in the world but I want to be, well, that was my Dad's handiwork too. The sign in my workshop that says, "you're only a failure if you don't try," once hung in his.

My plane's registration number will be N614EF, and while you might think that's 6-1-4-echo-foxtrot, it's really June 14, Eileen and Fred. The day they were married. I figure it's their airplane too. They helped build it, so their "day" should be on it.

In the years before he died, he didn't get around too much, but I'd talk to him from time to time on the phone and when the subject came to building an airplane, he'd always say, "well, just make sure you're careful."

If you have a father from the Greatest Generation, you learn to speak "Dad talk." You know that line in the Dixie Chicks song where the daughter is leaving home and as she's pulling out, Dad says "check the oil."? That's Dad talk. And it doesn't mean "check the oil," any more than "Gee, the Patriots didn't play too well today" in our conversations meant something about football.

These are the connections that I find all over Planet RV. And while folks may not be saying it; they're "speaking it" just the same. Sons aren't saying to Dad or Mom , necessarily, "this plane belongs to you." Well, at least they're not saying it with words. But they're saying it nonetheless. Sometimes it's an N number, sometimes it's just a ride in an airplane. But they're saying it.

Saturday morning is my favorite day of the week, and not just because it's the time when I realize I don't have to get up and go to work (when you're an online editor for a company whose core media is radio, you're always at work).

Nope Saturday is the morning I get to sit around and read my e-mail. The pressure of scrounging up something to stick in the Hotline (which is how most of my mornings begin) is gone, the issue has been sent out, and the time is all mine.

And once I get through all the spam, there's usually a couple of personal e-mails from RV friends, most of whom I haven't met personally.

Now, you've probably realized by now that this particular column each week isn't about how to build an RV; I focus mostly on the personal connections we have because of these projects, either to the projects themselves, each other, or someone else. This week is no different.

Last Thursday night, I got a note from Walter Tondu, who has a terrific Web site for RV builders , indicating that he'd signed up his father, Larry, to receive the Hotline. My mind immediately snapped back to one of my favorite RV-themed videos. The one where Walter -- and his Dad -- moved his project to the airport.

It's my favorite video, not so much because of the process of moving the plane, but because there was a segment in there featuring Larry. Now maybe it's because I'm a proud father, or because I like to think I once had one, but I easily detected the face of a proud dad along with one very infectious laugh, and an obvious great sense of humor.


"I'm the proud one," Walter said about his Dad when I told him that. And, darned, if that isn't obvious when he flew his plane home to Michigan last year after Oshkosh.


Oh, there's more. This week, I was patrolling the various EAA chapter sites and came across the nifty shot you see over on the left. It's a photo of Mark Navratil and his Dad. They can wear the sunglasses, but you can't mask the pride. This shot, according to the EAA newsletter, won in the General Aviation category of the Iowa Department of Transportation photo contest.

Although we don't seem to be a bunch that talks about these things much, there seems to be a lot of "Dad" in a lot of RVers and aviators. And many times, a lot of moms too.


A few years ago, my Mom came out to visit. She's 85 years old now, and I was renting a Piper Warrior. That's the one-door-and-you-have-to-walk-up-on-the-wing Piper Warrior. My mom was in no condition to walk up the wing, but there was no way she was missing her first-ever ride in a small airplane, especially one piloted by her baby boy. So she sat on the wing and pushed herself up and into the cabin.

We launched for a flight over fly-over country and she told me how, when she was a girl, she wanted to grow up and be Amelia Earhart.

"The plane's yours," I said, and an old lady got a chance to live a dream of flying a plane for a few seconds, and a middle-aged man finally figured out where his love of flying came from.

Then there's Gerry Humphreys of Limerick, Ireland. He had his first flight in his RV-7 on Tuesday. He sent me the picture you see here. Aside from the fact his family appears to be postcard perfect, check out the look on his Mum's face. She's holding the bottle of champagne. Isn't that priceless?

And so, being a news guy, I had to poke into this a little bit more, and asked Gerry to tell me about her.

"My mum is a retired anaesthetist, has has been living with my obsession with flying since shortly after I was born when my Dad, an ex-RAF WWII era fighter pilot, 'flew' me around the room in his arms," Gerry wrote. "He left flying in the late '50s and started farming when his uncle left him the farm here in Limerick, about 18 miles East of Shannon airport in South West Ireland."

"I only discovered he was a pilot when I was about 7 and found some old photos in a drawer. He never talked much about flying, but I made up for him! I dreamt about flying and aeroplanes when I should probably have been dreaming about girls, and started building models as soon as I could. Mum and Dad always encouraged me and over the years paid for more than their fair share of engines, radio gear, fuel etc."

"They were both proud when I got a scholarship from the RAF in my last year of studying Aeronautical engineering at Queens University in Belfast. I spent 20 years in the RAF mostly flying Harriers and retired home to the farm when we discovered my dad had cancer and 6 months to live. That was in 1997, and since then I have been farming organic beef cattle and found a way to stay flying with the local flying club at Coonagh, noteworthy as probably the shortest, narrow licensed strip where prople learn to fly in Europe (400 x 9 m)."

"I met my wife Vicky in the RAF, so she is used to aircraft, in fact I ejected from a Harrier the day after we got engaged; I was supposed to be leading a 4 aircraft formation over her station and did not show up. I had a generator failure followed by engine failure on short finals at Yeovilton down the road. I had a 0.4 sec parachute ride, fortunately no-one was injured and they found a mechanical fault next day."

"We are very lucky to live here on the farm, lots of space, and of course, an airstrip, which was one of my first projects when I took over the helm. I started flying professionally for a local company www.pacnetair.com and after the strip was complete the obvious next step was to build my own aircraft. The RV7 was the obvious choice, and so the last few years have seen me with plenty to do in my spare time!

We are always happy to see visitors, so drop by if you are in this part of the world!"

Yep, that's a mighty fine airplane that your Dad, and Mum, and wife, and children built, Gerry.

I recall a thread on VAF a year or so ago where someone maintained you have to be a "special" person to build an RV. I thought it was enough to scare off a newbie who thought there was something magic about this process, and that much of the character -- persistence, patience etc. -- is something that we can mostly acquire through the building process.

But I suppose, looking back, there are obvious traits in an RV builder -- they come from a solid line of hearty, airplane-building-character stock. Sure, a lot of what we know once we build these things we acquired in the process. Sometimes it's a result of some fancy book learnin'. But all of the time we can thank the gene pool and some people who served as role models.

We build these planes ourselves. But we never build them alone.

My plane, my child

I ordered my RV-7A slow-build kit in the spring of 2001. Like many airplane builders, I wasn't sure I had the skills to build an airplane. I wasn't sure I had the money either. As I get started on the finishing kit five -- almost six -- years later, I'm still not sure where the dough is going to come from for my pay-as-I-go project. It's a balancing act to make sure there's not more "go" than "pay." But so far, so good, so slow.

What intrigues me about the slowness of the project is how many life forms it has taken on. I talked a few weeks ago about how the project is building me too, but the project has also been quite transformative.

When I first contemplated a homebuilt, I thought it would be a great way for my kids to be involved in something with me. At the time, they were 15 and 12 and, looking back, I probably should've started it earlier. But, of course, there wasn't the money to do so because, among other reasons, there were two kids who were 15 and 12.

Long-term, I viewed an airplane as the way to visit the kids when they went off to college in the far-flung corners of the universe. I saw the plane as the magic carpet for Dad.

The kids were as excited as I was when the tail kit arrived. They enjoyed helping to unpack everything. But as I started the project, it was rare to find more than one of us in the garage. The 12-year-old made a few more appearances during the original construction of the "H" jig to build the HS (at that time), probably because 12-year-olds are more "Dad-friendly" than 15-year-olds, who are starting to discover girls, TV, sleeping late, videogames, and one-word answers to any conversation the old man should initiate.

So the project became an occasional solo act. By the time the wings came along, things had changed. We realized one of my sons had some special needs at the time and it was a difficult time for all of us. The annual trip to Oshkosh with him, and his occasional bit of help on the plane turned the project into "therapy" for a short time, and between it and me, the strings that connect a father and son, though frayed, never broke. Never.

When things got worse, however, enthusiasm for the project waned because life was getting in the way. It's hard to be excited about flying, when your child is in pain on a near daily basis. And so, in a fit of my own desperation, the project was put up for sale. Fortunately, it didn't sell and I listened to someone on a bulletin board who said, "just roll it into the corner." Since it was a pay-as-you-go project, leaving it alone for awhile didn't cost me anything. And so, my project became an abandoned project.

As a few months went by, the ups-and-downs of family life started to stabilize a bit and work resumed on the project. From time to time, my youngest boy, then 15, helped me buck the rivets on wing skins. And my oldest son would take a crack at it too, and proved quite good at it.

I started treasuring more, those times. I started treasuring more, the dings or dents that they helped me make in my wings (OK, I made most of them by myself!). When they would help me with a particular section, I would have them "autograph" the inside of the part with a Sharpie pen. I have quite a few autographs and messages that will be there forever. I'll never erase them. And so now, my project was a father's scrapbook.

Just this morning I was downstairs finishing up putting some nutplates on the wing skin (where the fairing attaches) and I started looking over those wings that have sat in the family room for the last 3 years. I cringed at one bad rivet on the rear spar doubler, and then started looking inside the skins and finding the messages from both kids on the days they helped shoot some rivets. "World's best flush rivet," one said. Another just said, "Sean," in his barely-legible signature that didn't mask his pride at mastering something. Anything. Something propelled him on his road to adulthood, past the minefields of adolescence. I think a few well-shot rivets deserve credit.

When the fuselage kit arrived, both of my lads were becoming young men -- fine young men. I realized as I looked back on the project, that there's a parallel between building an airplane and raising children. Plenty of people tell you it can be done with patience and a lot of money. That you'll start out trying to get the hang of it, make your share of mistakes, but pressing on and doing the best you can, you'll get better at it. And by the time the finishing kit arrives, you'll realize you were better at it than you sometimes thought, often wishing that you could go back and do the parts again, armed with the knowledge you didn't have before. Sometimes you'll look at other builder's projects and wonder why theirs are so perfect to the naked eye, but then they note that they made mistakes too, and you feel better. Your project is another of your children.

And then the first flight comes and your project is a finished airplane flying on its own power, and you burst with pride -- and maybe some tears -- at your accomplishment and the beauty of your project. The folks who said, "it'll get better" when you were folding over rivets, were right. It does. It gets darned near perfect and the occasional poorly-executed task in the past seems insignificant, no matter how much sleep it caused you to lose at the time.

My sons are out of the house now. They're flying on their own. My oldest son, now 21, isn't pounding rivets with me anymore, but he is working with me at my place of business, and it's been a great time. My youngest son, 18 and counting, shares an apartment with the brother he used to battle on a daily basis, and is Minnesota's youngest EMT, working on becoming an advanced EMT and paramedic. He's going to school and working full-time. I didn't build them by myself, but I did some of it.

And so now my airplane project is my youngest child; keeping the old man company and reminding me on a daily basis that when I'm gone, it, the dings, the dents, the autographs, and the eventual flying magic carpet, will remind someone that I was once here. Doing the best I could, making my share of mistakes, and loving every minute of it.

I dream of the day my project will be fully grown, and we can go flying with its siblings.

(This article originally was written for the RV Builder's Hotline)

Right here, Provenzani!

I need more sawhorses around the house. So I got up early today, grabbed the keys and headed to Home Depot to buy some 2x4s and some of those plastic little jigs. Just stick the 2x4s in the plastic, turn the screws, and voila! One sawhorse.

But as I started to get into the car, I thought, "wait a second! I've got a bunch of wood out back, scraps from the world's longest deck rebuilding project, why don't I just make sawhorses out of that?" Save the money on lumber. Save the money on gas.

I remembered an episode of This Old House in which Tom Silva gave a lesson on how to build a sawhorse. Armed with Google, I searched for it online and found the page, printed it out, and went to work.

Three hours later, I had three sawhorses. OK, that's an hour per sawhorse, or roughly 45 minutes more per sawhorse than Tom Silva, but I was taking extra measurements and going a little overboard on a few details. That and the battery on my cordless screwdriver gave out. That's my story.

So why is this a big deal? Because in junior high school -- or maybe it was in high school, I forget -- I flunked "industrial arts." Flunked, to me, is a "D." It wasn't the only "D" I ever got, but it was the only one I cried about. (The "D" in geometry in 11th grade didn't concern me that much because I was more interested in getting a date with Kathie Morse, who sat next to me.) Guys aren't supposed to flunk shop. I flunked shop.

I not only flunked shop. I was embarrased in front of the whole class while I flunked shop. We were making one of those typical wall plant holder things that mothers and fathers get from their industrial artists every year. We were supposed to learn about using a compass to make perfectly centered, symmetrical "handles." But I couldn't master the compass and made a plant thingamabobber that looked, well, drunk.

And I know it looked drunk because Mr. Provenzani, the teacher, ordered everyone in the class to turn off the machines and pay attention as he grabbed my drunken plant thing and displayed it to the class, noting that it did, in fact, appear inebriated. Yep, funny stuff for a teenager. Class act, Mr. Provenzani.

And, so I've lived with that for a long time. When I was learning to fly, I flunked the final exam -- called a checkride. That bothered me too, so much that I'm constantly reading about flying and working on being a better pilot to prove to myself that the first checkride's failure was a fluke.

But that industrial arts "D" was no fluke. I earned it. And in most of the years since, I didn't learn it. Until about 10 years ago when I started accumulating tools and began to be more interested in making things. I kept it and it and I've gotten better.

Back to the sawhorses. I needed them today because today I started mating the wings on the airplane I'm building by hand in the garage.



How do you like them apples, Provenzani?