With a Pitts S-2E and a 1947 Aeronca Chief on the Side

Pitts S-1T N68RH
Serial No. 001 – Built by Roger Hess

Thousands of amateurs have built and flown their own airplanes since the beginning of manned flight, in a time before flying machines were even called airplanes. Plans for a bi-wing glider were found in a 1913 copy of The Boy Mechanic, fully described in a page and a half of text and one drawing. In the early 1930s a series of magazine articles covered the construction of a Pietenpol Air Camper, a high-wing monoplane built of wood and powered by a Model A engine. In the 1960s or early ’70s Popular Mechanics magazine published a set of plans for the Volksplane, a wonderfully simplistic and boxy airplane powered by an air-cooled Volkswagen engine.

Plans-built aircraft are still plentiful, but kit-built aircraft, where many of the sub-assemblies are supplied factory-made have increased in popularity. As long as the builder performs more than half of the overall construction effort the aircraft can still be considered amateur-built, operating with a special airworthiness certificate in the experimental category. The freedom to innovate designs destined for this experimental category – without the constraints of type certification – has resulted in a large number of amateur-built aircraft that exceed the performance, efficiency, and in many cases the beauty of production aircraft.… Read the rest