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We made pretty good progress
for the first few months then Gary's efforts trailed off as his first
daughter was born. I continued on for another 6 months then my daughter
was born in June of 1998. Man, kids really put a dent into these kinds
of projects! I built the Kitfox in my garage and I found that progress
when building at home is much faster than when building at a location
other than your home (our workshop was located at a local airport). The
biggest thing about building a plane is doing a little something every
day. I found many many days when I just didn't feel like going over to
the airport to work on the project.
Progress really trailed
off in '99 and '00 due to a variety of reasons. It's amazing two years
passed so quickly! During those two years, we located Subaru EA81 engines
to power our birds and worked on rebuilding those. I primed my completed
fuselage and mulled over various design problems like how to mount the
engine, the tailwheel, etc.. I also created a propane powered
to mount on the Nieuport and began vacuum-forming ABS plastic shells
which I sell to other Nieuport builder's to facilitate building their
display guns.
In late '00, my wife and I decided to finally build a house on a piece
of property we had purchased back in '98. One of the goals of buying the
property was so I could build myself a kick-butt workshop and move my
project "home". Construction on our house started in April of
'01 and we moved in on 10-Aug-01. My 60'x40' workshop out behind our house
was completed in mid-August '01. I finally got power, water, and lights
installed by October '01 and got back to work on my Nieuport. But, then
daughter #2 came along in July '02 and things slowed down again.
By 2005 I really got going and finished up the Nieuport that year in time to take it to Oskosh. Since then I've put many enjoyable hours on the Nieuport at fly-ins and around the patch. Nothing beats wind in the wires! |
