S!,

I told Gabby about this the other night, and she asked me to post it on the forum. I wrote this when I was in the Mad Hatters_Squad two years ago. This was the first time I ever flew alone in an airplane. Anyway, Gabby, this is for you; J

When I was 24yr's old, I built a foot launch biplane made of douglas fir, bamboo, shrink film, double stick tape, and bailing wire. It had a 32’ wingspan, and was 12’ long. It took six months to build, and cost $50.00. It weighed about 35-40 lbs.

The pilot had to hang by his armpits on two bamboo poles sticking out of the leading edge of the lower wing. The front ends of the bamboo poles were supported with wire attached to the leading edge of the upper wing.

To accommodate different pilot weights, the pilot would have to move forward or back on these two poles till he found the right balance. It turned out not to take much movement.

It was set up to fly straight ahead. This meant anyone could fly it if they had the guts...lol.

The first time I took it out we had a 15mph breeze blowing up a 60’ hill with a fairly steep slope. I was too chicken to fly it first, so my neighbor, George took the job as test pilot. J

He took right off with just two steps, and flew straight out. He was about 40’ off the ground when he got over the bottom of the hill. The plane veered off a little to the right. He was going so slow! He tried to move his legs over to the left to straighten out his flight path, but with 32’ wings it did absolutly no good.

He landed with two steps just like he took off. We made an adjustment to the verticle stabilizer. He flew it again. J This time it flew straight. By this time we had quite a crowd of people. I flew it next. Still scared!....lol

It was cool! The wings felt like they were part of my body. I could feel everything they they were doing. It was not at all scary or uncomfortable. I didn’t even notice any weight on my armpits. It just felt like I was part of the plane.

People were begging to fly it, so we spent the rest of the day flying, and warching other people fly. No accidents!

The next weekend was a little differen’t...lol. This time the wind was up around 25mph. Again, I was too chicken to fly it, so the same neighbor volenteered. (Whew!)

We were all standing at the top of the hill holding the airplane. George was in the cockpit...lol, and the other two of us were holding the wingtips. George was almost ready to take off when a strong gust came up.

His weight was still a little too far back. He rose straigt up. (We couldn’t hold on to the plane!) The bottoms of his feet were about 12’ above our heads! The gust quit after a couple of seconds. He came down like he was riding on an elevator, and he landed right in his original foot prints! It all happened so fast, we were all yelling. We asked him if he was sure he wanted to do this? He couldn’t wait to go, so we moved his weight forward just a little.

He took off and started climbing. He was about 25’ above the top of the hill when a gust blew his left wingtip up 3 or 4 feet. He turned a little to the right, then he started sideslipping. At this point his wings were at about a 45% angle. Screeming and yelling, he sideslipped all the way to the ground at about 5mph.

The right wingtip hit the ground first. The wing slowly crumbled. Sticks were snapping like firecrackers! He was still screeming, and we were afraid he was going to be impaled by one of the broken sticks, but the Lord had mercy on him! J

His feet hit the ground. The plane did a half circle, (with him running his rear off) it then flipped off in front of him leaving him just standing there without a scratch. He didn’t fall down, he just stood there yelling!...lol

Needless to say, that was the end of our flying, but it has been a good memory for all of us. J Moral of story, don’t fly a 5mph airplane in a 25mph wind!

Since those days I built 5 ultralights. Had two crash landings, but that is another story!...lol. I will try and get some pictures of the $50.00 airplane, and maybe some ultralights scanned for you to post on your online picture album.

Shoot Ya later!

AH_VonBlaster