The Sacramento Bee from Sacramento, California • 31

The Sacramento Bee Final Monday November 9 1987 C3 do-it-yourself fliers build own David Womeldorff above and nine colleagues built the Christen Eagle plane at left from a kit What they got was as Womeldorff put it of camaraderie and a beautiful a two-seater that would have cost more than twice as much to buy New York Times photos By Claudia Deutsch New York Times NI AORK rising hasalwaxs been a big part of David Womeldorff life He was a flier in the Air Force for 1 1 years He has owned his own airplane for 20 ears He is president of his local Bellevue Wash aerobatics club which sponsors competitions for amateur aerobatics pilots And he makes his living as an engineering design manager at the Boeing Military Airplane Co in Seattle Logically Womeldorff should have hit some sort of aviation saturation point bv now But no always wanted to build my own airplane" Womeldorff said Now Womeldorff who is 55 has built his plane with the help of nine Boeing colleagues and a do-it-v ourself kit put out by Christen Industries Inc inAfton Wvo It took the men 15 months of nights and weekends and about 1 (00 each W'hat they got was as put it "lots of camaraderie and a beautiful airplane" a two seater aerobatic biplane that would have cost more than twice as much to buv Building airplanes has become a huge and growing hobby in this country Of the 210(100 general aviation planes in use today 1 1000 were built at home And more are on the wav Henry Ogrodzmski director of policy and planning for the Experimental Aircraft Association an Oshkosh is organization for custom airc raft builders and restorers estimates that about 20000 planes are being built at home right now The growth is particularly dramatic in that flving in general seems to be on the downswing as a hobby By the end of the last decade almost 1 )0000 people a year were taking flving lessons Now only about 90000 a year are learning to fly Moreover sales of light propeller planes have been in a trough for the 1 ist six years In fact last year for the first time more airplanes emerged from garages and basements and backyards than from all of the aircraft factories combined "The kit industry is growing because the aircraft industry in this ountry has been said Alfred Scott president of Sequoia Aircraft a Richmond company that sells both plans and kits The gap between kit prices and manufactured plane prices is huge The Eagle hristen Industries' kit plane and the Pitts Special which hristen sells ready-to-fly are almost identical aerobatic planes You can build an Eagle for $28000 The heapest Pitts is $50000 Similarly William Wink Sr a car dealer in Bloomfield Hills Mich recently bought a rench aer obatics plane for upwards of $107000 He is also building a Falco Sequoia's wooden airplane two are incredibly similar said Wink the Falco will cost me at most $t)0000 by the time done Nonetheless neither Wink nor other kit-plane builders cite cost savings as a major factor in their decision to build their own aircraft is a ton of ego in all said Wink who is 65 plane is getting larger and larger and I feel like a painter stepping back and looking at his work Kitmakers apparently understand that attitude quite well For a plane to be classified as home-built and thus escape strict Federal Aviation Administration regulations at least 51 percent of it must be put together by its owner Kits are now available that arrive 49 percent complete That means that a plane builder can have something resembling a real airplane fuselage sitting in the garage just a few weeks after starting Building an airplane is easier than it used to be for technical reasons too Wink's preference for wood is an exception to the trend Metaland more recently composite materials have increasingly replaced wood as the building blocks for light airplanes so fewer skills are needed to assemble them As recently as 15 years ago a do-it-yourselfer would have had to be a woodworking expert to build an air-woilhv plane today he or she just needs fortitude and a liking for detail work There are kits and blueprints available for every taste skill level and pocketbook Twenty years ago there were about 50 blueprints available and no kits Today most aficionados agree that there are better than 350 designs available selling for as little as $150 for some blueprints to more than $50000 for fairly inclusive kits (engine extra) to as much as $100000 for custom airplanes with every conceivable bell and whistle OST AVIATION experts esti- VI mate that the custom built plane market generates about $15 million to $20 million a year in sales distributed among some 400 or so players including parts suppliers More exact figures are almost impossible to come bv Since the industry is virtually unregulated theie is no central repository of information about manufacturers Home built planes are classified as experimental and the FAA does not require designers or kit makers to register their wares oi pass standards for airworthiness Most builders get a certificate of experimentation from the FAA when their planes are completed but for the three or more The kit industry is growing because the aircraft industry in this country has been killed5 Alfred Scott Sequoia Aircraft president far fewer accidents and 85 percent of them could be traced to pilot error $210 million was paid out The numbers are reflected in insurance premiums Steketee says that in 1972 insurance costs averaged about $2111 for an airplane in 1985 it was $70000 a plane To some extent the liability issue affects custom builders too It has increased the cost of parts that must be bought from commercial manufacturers Few kitmakers carry liability insurance Most say their profit margins are too slim to make insurance an option liability insurance is so cost-prohibitive for the home-built plane industry that you could say it is essentially said Sandra Hamilton treasurer of Stoddard-Hamilton Aircraft Inc a kitmaker in Arlington Wash Those few kitmakers that do carry liability insurance generally pass on some of the costs to their customers Both the Eagle and the Pitts Special sell well for Christen Industries which pulls in about $5 million annually But Frank Christensen chairman of Christen Industries says that if it were not for insurance costs he could sell both much cheaper sold between 600 and 700 Eagle kits since he said we see people every day who want to buy the airplane but afford it If we could have kept costs down we would have sold double the amount year the industry as a whole produced 17811 airplanes 14400 of which were single-engine That productivity has come back to haunt the industry The 1982 recession brought new plane sales for private and business use to a halt Many of the people who bought planes in 1978 and 1979 put them back on the market The result was that used airplane sales soared while new plane sales plummeted THE 1980s have been disastrous for the industry in another way too It is being strangled by product liability insurance costs In May 1986 the Cessna Aircraft Corp once the leading maker of private planes suspended production of single- and multi-engine aircraft altogether The company cited the "enormous increase in the cost of product liability insurance" as the major factor in the decision Those companies that remain are having a very rough ride liability costs have become the largest single cost involved in building a new said Edward Stimpson president of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association Drew Steketee Beech's director of corporate communications is more blunt industry is being sued out of he said In 1977 he says the general aviation insurance companies paid out $24 million in liability claims In 1985 although there were composite materials and other state-of-the-art design elements for close to a decade The only commercial plane to employ all these components is the Beech Starship and that is because Burt Rutan the Beech Aircraft Corp 's chairman pioneered many of those advances in home-built planes "Comparing custom-built planes to factory planes is like comparing Fer-raris and said Ogrodzmski of the Experimental Aircraft Association high-tech kits will produce an aircraft that is very fast very fuel efficient very crash-worthy and very personal The commercial manufacturers are dealing with 40-year-old technology Actually the commercial manufacturers are dealing with problems that go well beyond technology lag They are just now facing the repercussions of the production boom they went through in the late 1970s According to Beech Aircraft 1978 was the peak production year for commercial aircraft makers That years that the typical airplane is under construction it is unlikely to be registered anywhere Moreover planes lighter than 255 pounds need not be registered with the FAA even upon completion On the surface it would seem the industry would be ripe for fraud and safety violations But insiders say neither has been a problem people who design these airplanes are generally aeronautical engineers or mechanical engineers who know all about stresses and loads and said Dennis Shattuck editor of KitPlanes a magazine for amateur airplane builders there is a strong sense of peer pressure Fveryone wants to be recognized as a brilliant designer or manufacturer or builder by his fellows In fact aviation experts say that brilliance is far more prevalent in the custom-built airplane field than it is in conventional factories Custom-built airplanes have been using canards (an extra little wing in front) engines that push the plane through the air rather than pull it at a PacTel agent 0 000 000 000 000 000 Now a new place to feel like a fat cat in Milpitas CA A I- V- Introductory rate is S89 per suite per night Installed plus tax bieaktast exerx morning out beautiful nine-storx atnum And two houis of complimentarx box ei each exenmg Extraordinary extras i no tiee tiansporta tion to and I mm San lose Airport Plus ou can eiio 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