It's nice to hear the values of building your own planes, there's really nothing quite like it for many of us. There really is an art to putting all those sticks and sheets together and it's time well spent during those long winter months so many of us have, then comes a new plane at the field to fly come spring, nothing quite like that either.

This winter I'm facing a new challenge, cutting an entire kit, scratch building I guess and combining two different planes to do it, a Baby Ace plans and a Super Ace plans being the only thing to guide me. The Baby Ace has a raised upper wing and the Super Ace is a bi-plane. I have plans for both to enlarge to around 1/5 scale which will give me a 72" wing span or there abouts. I would like to be able to power it with a DLE 20 cc engine, weight of the finished plane will determine a lot of this so I still have things to figure out before I start.

This is all about my own skills of modifying a plane to something no one else has, it's part of the joy of building it to begin with. When I get the kit cut I will build it here, I think (hope) it will create some interest and inspire others to step out of the box of kit building, not saying any thing is wrong with that, it's all I have built to date but it's more about altering and challenging ones self to do something different and advance your skills.

Here are two examples of planes I modified, the Tiger 60 has been completely modified, wing location and enhanced performance tail feathers plus it's a tail dragger with custom cowl and 20cc gas engine. Second one is a 1/4 scale Spacewalker 11, basic box build except I made the fuselage to appear as metal skinned rivets and all, eliminated forward cockpit and added a head rest to rear one, wing is 3 piece with attached center section, wings are tube mounted. Both are great flying planes.

Leroy