Least Expensive Flying

Mention 'The Man From Illinois' and most people will say 'Abe
Lincoln.' And I mean, most people EVERYWHERE. But for me the 'man
from Illinois' will always be the fellow who asked my opinion
regarding the least expensive way for him to fly. To give him an
honest answer I needed to know a bit more about him and for a time we
exchanged messages on an almost daily basis.

He wasn't a tool user in that earning his daily bread did not depend
upon driving a truck, building a house nor using one machine to make
another, as would be the case of a machinist (at the component level)
nor assembling parts made by others, such as someone on an assembly
line or building bulldozers or what-have-you. Indeed, during our
exchange the fellow finally admitted with a laugh that while he
FACILITATED the building of things, in that he was involved with
finding the MONEY on which everything in our society depended and
which I saw as a necessary job, he himself could not claim to have
built ANYTHING in the physical sense, unless we returned to his days
as a school-boy during which he and his fellows had assembled an 8"
reflecting telescope. Sports-wise he played golf and tennis. When he
mentioned 'crew' I asked if he meant rowing or sailing and in doing so
probably revealed my short-comings as a councilor, for there followed
a lengthy gap in our messages. We eventually settled on rowing AND
sailing, both done while in college but the latter still engaged in
although not as a major activity. I believe he said his age was 54
and I recall listing his abilities as sailing a boat, driving a car
and piloting an airplane but if he had a leaky faucet he would call a
plumber.

As for his financial status he said -- more than once -- 'There's
simply no money.' Which wasn't quite true. There was 'no money'
relative to 'money' as defined by his working experience. Could he
afford a 1/4" drill motor from Harbor Freight? (At that time listed
for about $14.00.) That got a rather confused reply involving someone
building an RV-4, the 'builder's kit' which proved hilariously
inadequate, failing to mention the REQUIRED air compressor, hoses,
regulators and so forth. And of COURSE he could afford a drill-motor
costing less than twenty dollars, although he was fairly sure *I* may
have been mislead with the cost of building an aluminum airplane.

Then (and now) Aluminum sheet stock various sources was going
for ...about two bucks a pound. (That's a very wishy-washy 'two
bucks' but the early worm and all that... I've picked up .016 in 5' x
25' sheets for eighty-six cents per pound. It was a local new/surplus
item the bulk of which eventually went to a Boeing sub-contractor.
But half a dozen sheets managed to fly into my shop before the truck
headed north.)

The man from Illinois was excited to learn there was a new/surplus
market for aviation-grade materials. I don't know what he did about
it but I never heard another word about the cost of materials. But
there were plenty of other things to cause him to hint, always
politely, that I may have been out of the field a bit too long; that
he was convinced only a HIGHLY SKILLED metal-smith could duplicate
Cal's efforts.

Rather than argue the point I steered him to the CX4 Group. That was
about two years ago. I haven't heard from him since.

The point here is that the only barriers capable of PREVENTING you
from building a safe, reliable airplane a 1. Yourself. 2. Your
language and 3. Your location.

Did he? Didn't he? I don't know.

-Bob