When I wrote to an old friend, who had built a beautiful Fal-co himself, that my home-built was at last flying, he replied, "I at the same time envy you the airplane and think there-but-for-the-grace." I knew exactly what he meant. Building an airplane is endless trouble, and once that ends, maintaining it is endless trouble too. But it's sweet trouble. Time spent taking things apart and putting them together, machining, drilling, shaping, laminating, is, at least for some people, time well spent. People who don't understand that wonder how you can stand to spend years alone in a garage or hangar puttering with pieces of metal and fiberglass. But then they don't understand how a yogi can spend so much time sitting crosslegged in the snow, either. The population of amateur builders has changed over the past couple of decades. The majority used to scrounge materials and build from plans―sometimes, as in the case of the once popular Wittman Tailwind, very sketchy plans indeed. Today they order hardware and materials over the internet from huge suppliers and assemble airplanes from largely prefabricated kits.
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