| The airplane was built by a man in
Colorado. When he finished it, a test pilot flew it twice, and then the
builder flew it for it's third flight. The builder must have had a
little trouble landing the airplane because when he did land, he bent the
left gear and part of the fuselage tubing. The airplane was
bought from the insurance company by
Wentworth Aircraft, who remove the engine and radios, and sold the rest
of the airplane in the Fly Mart at Oshkosh.
I have been looking for a new project for a year or so now,
and I had actually went to Oshkosh to talk to
Warner Aircraft
about the Spacewalker II.
Dave Shessler knew what I was looking for when he spotted 777RU at
the Fly Mart. He called me on my cell phone and we met up to look the
airplane over. Then it really got interesting.....
I went to Wentworth and bought the airplane for about 1/3 of the
cost of the kit, and I got instruments, a motor mount, finished wings, and a
lot of other stuff that doesn't come with the kit.
Dan Weise had driven up to Oshkosh pulling a trailer with
Bill Hirzel's N3N floats on board. We loaded the
Spacewalker on the trailer, and hauled it to Rick Eckert's
Olympia Spa and
Resort, where we stuck it in his loading dock area. I figured I
could come back in a week or so to haul it home. Just for grins, on Sunday I
called a few U-Haul dealers in the Oshkosh area, and located a truck big
enough to fit the airplane.
Now I had another dilemma, how do I get two airplanes, one at the
airport, and one in the truck, home. I called Bill David, and he was just
getting ready to take off with Jeff Hammons in his A-36 Bonanza to do some
dual instruction. I suggested that he dual instruct him right on over
to Wisconsin, and then fly my Cessna 185 home.
Everything worked just like clockwork, and by Sunday evening
everything was home. Without the help of Dave Shessler, Bill Hirzel, Dan
Weise, Tom Lawrence, Kendyl Peters, My father and many more great EAA
members, I couldn't have pulled this off.
After I got the airplane home, and when I started tearing it down,
I found a few things that just weren't up to my standards. So instead of
simply making the little repair, and putting an engine on the airplane to
make it fly, I'm going to do a complete rebuild and repaint. It will
probably take me a couple of years because of limited time to work on it,
but having a project is why I bought it in the first place. I enjoy working
on airplanes.
Joe |
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