It takes many things to build an airplane to completion. Time for sure; money, of course. Some skills, many of which you learn along the way. But among the greatest of a successful builder’s attributes is an unshakable belief in tomorrow.
Indeed, faith in the future must be the strongest motive, the greatest inoculation against the torrent of life’s impediments, the very reason to “take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them,” to borrow from the bard.
Certainly there are reasons not to build every time we think to pick up our tools. Fatigue, friends calling, boredom, the heat, the cold, the indecision, the parts that didn’t arrive, the fear of getting it wrong, the call of a perfect sky begging us to fly the other plane—the list is endless, really. For the more social among us just the call to build is tyrannical, a demand to solitary confinement with little more than a dream for company.
To finish a modern kit airplane is more than many can muster, and absolutely worth celebrating. If you find it difficult you’re not alone (don’t give up). It’s worth remembering the old days of plans building called for the sort of fortitude associated with solo global circumnavigations. What then of those hardy souls scratch building one-off designs when the reason for the build is, at best, on hold? What sort of faith does it take to continue when the reason you started doesn’t exist any longer…but is supposed to return?
That sort of devotion to building is a passion on a different level; interestingly, I came across three good examples of it while researching racing plane projects in this extended post-Reno off-season.
Red Jensen’s one-off F1 racer Impulse was started perhaps five years before the loss of Reno and if anything has gained momentum in the last year. The carbon fuselage is finished and was shown at the last Reno looking like a cross between a V-tailed sailplane and a Baka bomb; with a 22-inch-wide cockpit it will be worn like a second skin. Fittingly, a set of wing skins just came out of the molds one of Red’s many friends routed out for him, and with progress now tangible Red says the urge to build is only gaining strength. As always, success breeds success.
The wing structure is next, with Red having just purchased an immense 500-foot roll of 0.125-inch pre-cured carbon fiber pultrusion. That explains what looks like one of the telephone company’s giant wooden spools next to the house. The pultrusion will eventually form the spar cap on the 15 G rated wing.
Red, who just left a longtime NASA gig designing, building and flying UAVs for similar work in the private sector, is working strictly at home on Impulse. By keeping it in his garage any odd bit of time can be spent working on his race plane; he loosely estimates Impulse will fly in early 2026 and he encourages anyone interested to follow along on his Impulse IF-1 Air Racing Team Facebook page.
The big question is how does Red find the grit for spending the time—not to mention the $30,000 he estimates he has in the project to date—on such a long-term, single-use airplane?
Red’s explanation is characteristically to the point. “It’s the mother of all bad decisions in aviation. To build a single-seat, day VFR plane that flies 30 minutes at a time is nuts.” Red goes on to observe aviation is generally “sort of nuts” before noting that what others might charitably call perseverance or chasing their dream is more direct for him. “I call it an addiction,” adding, “Addicts make bad decisions with money. Sometimes you do or buy things for your addiction that should have gone to other things.” To which I’ll add, society will give you a pass as long as you have enough money left over after aviation for maintaining yourself and whoever else is tagging along on your ride.
Like other air racers, Red has faith more air racing is coming, somewhere, somehow. That’s not blind faith considering the big National Air Races are scheduled for October of 2025.
Another of the faithful is pro-pilot Carl Robinson. Carl’s done his share of Biplane and Formula One racing and has been working on a rather advanced take on one of air racing’s oldest designs, the Knight Twister. If the KT doesn’t ring a bell you’re forgiven as you need white hair by now to recall Don Fairbanks rounding the pylons at Reno in one of these diminutive single-seat biplanes. Speedy little things, all you really need to know about Knight Twisters is they required an increase in wing area to meet the Biplane classes’ minimum!
Carl’s Twister is as faithful to the 1930s plans as a Hollywood script “based on a true story” might be. To wit, its multiyear saga has seen it through Tom Aberle’s, then Justin Meaders and now just out of A. J. Smith’s Aerosmith Engineering shop in Nebraska wearing a full set of carbon fiber fuselage skins. Spinner to rudder post Carl’s racer is going to be the sleekest Twister ever. As if that isn’t enough, Chris McMillian is working on a Twister of his own, and he’s next in line for carbon skins from AJ.
More Biplane faith is seen in Jeff Rose’s one-off super bipe. Imagine an F1 zoom pigeon with a spare wing. Jeff is also an experienced Biplane racer and, wanting to do battle with perennial Biplane champion Phantom, has been working at wallet pace to concoct his own speed-dedicated “two-winger,” as the guy on the unwashed side of the crowd line puts it. Same guy who asks if your 220-mph biplane “used to be a crop duster?” There’s one in every crowd.
Jeff’s dedication to building has its own twist as the required second class medical is likely too much to ask for anymore. So he gets all the angst and poverty of building for years and will get to fly his creation, but must turn it over to someone younger to race it.
‘It’s hard. It’s really hard,” he says. “It has nowhere to run [right now], no value and anyone who’s bought a gallon of resin these days knows [about the money].” A dentist, Jeff is still recovering from the time lost to his forced COVID shutdown—California didn’t consider dentists essential workers—and after recent cataract surgery he’s going Basic Med. Racing rules require a second class medical.
“Still, I want to finish the airplane; I want to fly it. I’ll never be able to race it…but I’m not a quitter.”
And right there is the builder’s mentality. You can’t say where the compulsion came from, or even the attraction to airplanes, or, in the cases cited here, to rounding pylons. But you shook hands with yourself to build an airplane, to join with aviation in the most intimate way. And by God, you’re going to finish it. Oh, you may say you’re the only person who will find value in your creation—but we all know many will think it’s cool. Very cool, in fact.
