Preamble

For me, homebuilding is just as much fun as flying. Somedays I just do not want to fly but most days I like to build. If the weather is good for hang gliding, that is the from of flying I prefer, next I like working on the minibat. With it I am learning many different things and it is a constant learning situation.

But who am I do be home building? I have owned a woodworking shop for about 26 years, rebuilt the Minibat and have done motorcyles and played with mechanical toys for years. I learned drafting by designing harpsichords and learned about practical flying in my early lessons in hang gliding about 12 years ago. I have my silver cross country in fixed wing soaring and have enjoyed my hours of cross country, although lately I have curtailed that for more building. I also ran the Sailplane HomebuildersWorkshop 1997 which featured hands on sessions with metal and glass.

I left Harris Gliding club with a feeling that I no longer belonged. I feel they exist for the benefit of a number of more well off members and consider anything but heavy competition class gliders not welcome at Harris Hill.

Before encouraging any of you to do home building let me warn you that it takes a long time and the vast amount of time required is something one does not always grasp at the beginning of a project. Luckily for me I have always done projects that take years to complete. I doggedly keep at them and complete them all. And an 800 hour project can easily take 2000. If you do 800 - 1000 hours a year you are doing fine. Just putting aside 3-4 hours a day seems rather easy when just looking at a project but when you actually get at it there never seems like any time to build. My building time is done in the afternoon. I decided to work part time for my own publishing business in the morning and do my plane building in the afternoon. I leave the evenings for anything else such as writing about my building. And my girlfriend hates the building of gliders.

One should also consider the affect on ones relationship, my girlfriend does not enjoy my building and she has decided to leave me.

I went from Hammondsport NY to Knoxville Tenn in early March 1996 to pick up my partially completed Windrose. In two days of anxious travel we returned with my plane.

I had not really wanted to build the windrose, instead preferring the Carbon dragon but seeing the windrose partially completed appealed to me and essentially all the pieces with it, clinched the deal. What I should have done was to have seen it in the flesh before I bought it but having made the purchase I am relatively happy.

At first I was overwhelmed at the many pages of plans and the complexity of it all. Some of the workmanship I disliked but that was easy to deal with..... I simply removed it or set it aside to redo later.