LOL!

flytoboat said:
As I am building in my walk-out basement, my most heard question is "how will you get it out of the basement"? My usual reply is: I'm going to hire a crane to pick up the house and I'll just fly it out...:eek: That is met with a dumbfounded look:confused: and followed quickly with the real explanation. :rolleyes:
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That's just excellent! (Here's your sign!)
 
Yeah!

gkimbrough said:
1. When will it be finished?
Best answer - "Thursday"

2. What color ar you going to paint it?
Best Answer - "Don't know yet"

3. Are you really going to fly that?
Best answer (from wife) - "You would too, if you'd seen him build it."

Geoff Kimbrough
N1707M Stearman
N6978C RV-8
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(#3) Bless her heart!
 
Ten words of appreciation

Big Boss visits our sub basement maintenance shop rarely. Once in three years on average when major inspection is due. Early last year I remember it was suspiciously quiet, even huge steam pipes and motors were not banging and humming as usual. He was in the shop looking at the pictures of my plane. Focused, interested. The whole minute. I regularly post pix 13"by19" in rows since 2006.

Big Boss: - is this your plane?
Me: - yes Sir.
Big Boss: - Neat. What do those numbers mean?
Me: - that's how many paychecks left to buy the engine...:eek:

Coincidence or good will - in few weeks there was a couple cents increase in hourly wage. This year my coworkers saw him again. Post pictures of your project at your workplace! Doesn't matter how boring your job is.
 
Great Thread

The one question that sticks out in my mind, was from a co? worker. "Can you land that thing in the water?" Answer: Yes, but I will have a tough time taking off again. That's when you get the best part; you see the dog with the tilted head look. I?ve quit giving intelligent answers; it's much more fun to see just how much you can get away with.
I have also gotten the "I wouldn't fly anything I built!" in my head I just say "there is a god!". I?m not sure just who people think built the commercial aircraft they just went to Hawaii in, they must be special!.:D

Happy tail winds.

Randy
 
I get questions about how complex or difficult it is, and always respond with:

Nah, airplanes are easy, you just need a few wings bolted together with an engine and a prop. Nothing to it.

schu
 
The usual suspects

The usual suspect questions are:

- How many rivets? I forget who, but isn't the count somewhere in the 14,000 range?

- Did you _really_ build this yourself?

- How long have I been working on it? Longer than I care to admit!

- Seeing that I live on a cul-de-sac, will I take take off from the cul-de-sac or roll it out to the main street?

- And less not forget: "Those wings sure are short."
 
Suicide

At a neighborhood Christmas party, a young wife over heard me talking about building a plane in my garage and said: "Why don't you just put a gun to your head and pull the trigger? That would be quicker and cheaper!" I was the one with the dumb founded look on my face. I said nothing to her. You can't educate the brain-dead!

As far as the woman that said that I would never let my husband waste money on something like that! That reminds me what Burt Rutan said at a forum at Oshkosh. His first wife told him: "That #@*@ airplane will go (Vari Viggen) or I will! " He took a long pause and said: "I missed her for a while!"

If your wife will not share your dreams, then she shouldn't share your life!
 
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It is interesting that there are two kinds of people. Those guys (and gals) like us who have the confidence and self assurance to know we could build an airplane if we wanted to. It probably goes way beyound just building an airplane. We believe we can do most anything with our minds and hands (except things that involve a ball). We don't even question ability, it is just "do we have the $ and time?" Then there are the other type. Those that can not even imagine building or fixing anything. I sure am glad I am in the 'can do' group and I have always felt sorry for those other types. While they can not imagine building an airplane, I can not imagine living with the idea that I couldn't do this or that. Poor things, it must be difficult. :)
 
I fitted my wings before riveting the forward skins on the fuselage. This entailed pulling the fuselage, on the jig, out of the garage into the driveway, chocking the jig level, and then fitting the wings and landing gear before match-drilling the gear mounts and reaming the spar holes. It took two days and, naturally, every neighbor in the subdivision dropped by to see what that was in my driveway. I got the usual questions: "How long?", "How much?", "How'd you learn to build an airplane?", "Will it fly from our street?", "Why would you want to build one?", etc.

My favorite, by far, was the fellow who, on being informed that the wings drooped because the fuselage was, in fact, upside down asked, "So how will you turn it over?" I badly wanted to say that I'd take off like that and then roll it upright but I was nice and admitted that the wings were coming back off and it would be rolled over before final assembly.

When people found out that my wife (5'3" and slender) and I handled the wings ourselves, their confidence in my sanity decreased markedly. Apparently, the public feels that aircraft should be built of steel plate to be safe, instead of lightweight aluminum.:rolleyes:
 
RV7AV8R said:
It is interesting that there are two kinds of people. Those guys (and gals) like us who have the confidence and self assurance to know we could build an airplane if we wanted to. It probably goes way beyound just building an airplane. We believe we can do most anything with our minds and hands (except things that involve a ball). We don't even question ability, it is just "do we have the $ and time?" Then there are the other type. Those that can not even imagine building or fixing anything. I sure am glad I am in the 'can do' group and I have always felt sorry for those other types. While they can not imagine building an airplane, I can not imagine living with the idea that I couldn't do this or that. Poor things, it must be difficult. :)
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Well Said. John Galt is alive and well on this forum.
 
New one tonight

Tonight while out at dinner, one of the waitresses hear a conversation about flying. Turns out she is in the aviation program at Hinds College.

She asked me if I trust it.

Absolutely.....

Now I asked her a question, how old is the plane you are learning to fly in?
Her response.... "I think it is a 1978 model".

My turn...Do you trust a plane that is that old? Her answer....not really, I was doubtful the first couple of times.
 
house gives birth to an airplane

flybill7 said:
The most common question for me was by far:

"How will you get it out of the basement?"

The answer: Link
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Bill, that's really cool - it looks like your house is giving birth to an airplane - not far from the truth, actually! Great pictures!
 
I have had most of the questions and comments listed here and it reminded me of how much of the general public thinks of aircraft. But first, here is one of my favorites:

Me: These are pictures of the airplane that I'm building
Coworker (female): Ewwww (as in disgust)
Me: [strange look on my face]
Coworker: Do you have a girlfriend who lives far away or something?

So here is a list that sums up my impression of how the general public thinks about airplanes. No disrespect intended, it's based on the silly questions that I get:

- Airplanes are for A-B travel only, not for fun flying, aerobatics, formation flying, etc.

- Airplanes need to be way overbuilt with strong, heavy materials to be safe. (If only they knew how safe our planes would be if they were 2X as heavy).

- Flying very low is safer that flying at high altitudes. (I guess because the higher you are, the faster you hit the ground when the plane inexplicably falls out of the sky.)

- A stall is when the engine quits

- When the engine quits, the airplane uncontrollably nose dives toward the earth unless the engine can be restarted.

- Parachutes are a magical life saver - they will always save your life before an accident happens. There is also no danger associated with an unplanned jumping out of an airplane.

- Everything is critical on an airplane. If one tiny little thing goes wrong, the airplane will crash.

- Homebuilt airplanes are less safe than factory built planes.

- Banking an airplane causes things in the airplane to fall to the "downward" side of the plane.

- "Little" airplanes are less safe than "big" airplanes. Also, safety mostly lies in the aircraft, not the abilities of the pilot.

- "Little" airplanes can also be referred to as "little Cessnas".

- Planes with propellers are low-tech and laughable, real airplanes have jets.
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Again, no disrespect intended, these misconceptions are mostly based on ignorance, not stupidity. I know there are many things that I'm ignorant about.


OK, I just thought of one more with a different coworker:

Coworker: How do you do your first flight? Do you fly a few feet above the ground so that you can jump out if anything goes wrong?
Me: [Trying not to laugh] No, the safest way is to climb to several thousand feet before leveling off.
Coworker: Oh yeah, the altitude would give you more time for your parachute to open.
 
Comment: "The government actually lets you build a airplane in your house"
response: "Yeah, the come to inspect my other project, the cruise missle, next week"

I had one especially post 911-paranoid neighbor call the FBI and reported that her neighbor was "building an airplane." Rather than wasting their time, they referred it to the local PD. An officer casually stopped by, not oficially, but because he had seen "From the Ground Up" and was fascinated by the whole effort. I gave him the whole tour and he loved it.
 
I am not one to tell people about building an airplane just to avoid many of the previous comments. My wife would often bring it up and she always had great responses...

Person to my wife: Are you going to fly in it with him? Is it safe?
My wife: You clearly don't know how anal my husband is.

I've gotten the same response from our friends. One said she would not ride in a small airplane with anyone that was not at least as anal as I am.

My next project will have wood wings. I can't wait for those comments.
 
Billion air

Jet owner to my Mother in Law who was waiting to pick us up after a 1000 miles Xcountry..

Upon seeing us land and hearing our Mom in law..Oh is that your daughter and her Husband?.."Yes he built that thing don't ya know?"

"Well I wouldn't fly in it"..casually blurts out..

and she says....."well you can afford not to have to!"

nice one!

Frank
 
pierre smith said:
......but in the early 70's, fresh out of the Army, I worked for a Cessna Ag airplane dealer and we always had two or three really pretty Agwagons in stock. One day a visitor was mosying around and after finding out that they were assembled in Wichita asked, "How'd they get here?":D

Regards,
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Hey, they haul lots of perfectly good vehicles around from the factory so's not to put miles on them. actually i'm surprised airplanes don't get hauled, they are expensive to fly. probably has to do with so few of them actually getting made compared to other vehicles.
 
haul vs. fly

Danny7 said:
Hey, they haul lots of perfectly good vehicles around from the factory so's not to put miles on them. actually i'm surprised airplanes don't get hauled, they are expensive to fly...
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I'll bet once you put your wings on and take them off a few times you'll see why they are assembled at the factory and then flown :D
 
Are you really going to fly that thing

Upon seeing my project for the 1st time, and old friend said:

"That's the biggest model airplane I ever saw!"

Tommy Walker
RV-6A, N 350 TW
 
Dumb Comments about Airplanes

Since the black box that contains the voice recorders is made out of indestructable material, why not make the whole plane out of that material.

I told an investor in my work projects that I was building an experimental airplane in my garage. His comment: I want to meet your wife. Mine barely lets me out of the house to play a round of golf.

The funny thing is for 2500 hours, she knew just where I was.

S S Anderson
RV 7A Flying
Weather was superb this morning. Global cooling?
 
I can understand that.........!!!!

I have a friend/aquaintence that use to come over and look very intently at my plane when I was building it. He had a Turbo 210. He was a very good RC builder, but sometimes lacked common sense. I have seen him go to the field with a beautiful patten plane, connect the aileron servo's backwards and then try to fly it (with horrendous results). He's one of these people "who knows everything about anything".

On his last visit over, he was looking at the wiring, airframe, engine very intently, after about twenty minutes, he finally turned to me and stated, "I would never fly anything that I had built!"

I looked at him and calmly stated " I can certainly understand that!"

Since then, he hasn't been back, Oh well.

Who do they think builds certified airplanes, God's from Mars??
 
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