Updated January 2006

 

Background Continued...

 

We made pretty good progress for the first few months then Gary's efforts trailed off as his first daughter was born. I continued on for another 6 months then my daughter was born in June of 1998. Man, kids really put a dent into these kinds of projects! I built the Kitfox in my garage and I found that progress when building at home is much faster than when building at a location other than your home (our workshop was located at a local airport). The biggest thing about building a plane is doing a little something every day. I found many many days when I just didn't feel like going over to the airport to work on the project.

Progress really trailed off in '99 and '00 due to a variety of reasons. It's amazing two years passed so quickly! During those two years, we located Subaru EA81 engines to power our birds and worked on rebuilding those. I primed my completed fuselage and mulled over various design problems like how to mount the engine, the tailwheel, etc.. I also created a propane powered to mount on the Nieuport and began vacuum-forming ABS plastic shells which I sell to other Nieuport builder's to facilitate building their display guns.

In late '00, my wife and I decided to finally build a house on a piece of property we had purchased back in '98. One of the goals of buying the property was so I could build myself a kick-butt workshop and move my project "home". Construction on our house started in April of '01 and we moved in on 10-Aug-01. My 60'x40' workshop out behind our house was completed in mid-August '01. I finally got power, water, and lights installed by October '01 and got back to work on my Nieuport. But, then daughter #2 came along in July '02 and things slowed down again.

By 2005 I really got going and finished up the Nieuport that year in time to take it to Oskosh. Since then I've put many enjoyable hours on the Nieuport at fly-ins and around the patch. Nothing beats wind in the wires!