Least Expensive Flying

On Mar 27, 12:43*pm, " wrote:
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

Hey Bob! Glad to see you're still at it.

Monk