As far as building time goes, you have to stay motivated. I could never do one as quickly as Mike as I spend an additional 50% of my time scratching my head and redoing things I did wrong the first time. The only reason it didn't take me two years to build is that we had a set building schedule that kept us motivated. It takes a normal human (not a super, plane building cyborg from patternia) much longer than that. With the hours I put in, even at minimum wage I could have made enough to pay someone to build my next one.

In the end I would still do it again as I don't expect the next one to take nearly as long.

Anthony