In the beginning… there was blood.

Yes. Troy is building an airplane. A real one. One where two full sized people can sit in it and leave terra firma thanks to the physics of lift. Don’t worry, before that happens, there are a lot of check boxes and sign offs that have to occur with the proper regulatory bodies. You might be asking, “what exactly is a practice kit?”. For $35 USD plus shipping, prospective airplane builders can purchase a training project package from the kit airplane manufacturer. This allows you to test out the waters, put a few holes in your fingers, before you start remortgaging your house for the rest of the airplane.

I’m actually playing catch up with Troy on blogging about his build and wasn’t quite sure where to begin this first post. He was advised by experienced builders to have a clean and organized area. I rejoiced at the prospect of finally having a garage that we wouldn’t be embarrassed of when the doors were up and open. I figured while he was still sorting out the garage in the evenings after work, I had time to research a hosting site, create a draft publication schedule, etc. Yeah no, he found a clean surface and put the pedal to the metal, literally. He already had a “look what I made!” moment last week that I have to figure out how to weave back into a narrative… and here I am, scrambling to learn Word Press (which by the way, is a lot easier than Geocities – anyone remember that thing?).

October 1st, just after lunch, was the day the RV-14A empennage kit arrived. The tail, the airplane’s butt, is typically the first part most kit builders start with – it’s slightly more forgiving than the wings when it comes to honing your skills in sheet metal work. It’s also infinitely cheaper than building the fuselage (which is the main hull of the airplane), because that means you would need to start dropping the real money into an engine too. A flat box full of sheet metal and a giant bag of rivets were the contents of the package. What isn’t very sexy to talk about is all the prep work that lead up to this moment: there was a classic car that had to be fixed and sold to make room, there were tools that had be purchased, shelves installed, my dog sporting equipment and gardening tools evicted (I think my scuba tanks are still in there, he hasn’t complained about them lately).

Time scale wise, this will be a multi-year project. The one individual we went to visit at the Burlington Airport is about to be air worthy by the end of 2020. He’s on year 5 and is a retired Air Canada pilot working on this plane full time. This plane will certainly test Troy’s resolve, our marriage, and, as our neighbour pointed out, how long I can keep this blog going before I poke my eyes out. This may have started with some blood, I suspect I might contribute a few drops here and there along the way. Women are better at riveting apparently – and I don’t say that with pride because there are a million rivets in this airplane.