My first passion from an early age was aviation.  My dad used to take me up in a Great Lakes Biplane as a kid from Perry Airport in Hollywood Florida.  It looked very similar to the one pictured here.  He built a PolyWagon, (a low wing composite mono-plane with wingtip fuel tanks) in the early 80's.  I would love to build a plane as well.  He recommends that I try a RV series plane from Vans Aircraft.  I especially like the RV-8.  I also like the aircraft kits produced by Lancair, but I doubt I will ever be able to afford one.  They sure are pretty though!  One of my all time idols in the aviation industry is mechanical genius Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, Inc.  He is the guy that built the Voyager airplane that went around the world non-stop without refueling.   I think he also designed the Long-EZ series of canard winged homebuilt planes.  I remember my dad telling me a story about a Velocity 4 place EZ that, while under testing, was induced into a flat spin and lost control.  The pilot opened the canopy to jump out and realized the aircraft was actually 'floating' down.  Somehow the shape of the aircraft produced enough drag in the vertical vector that a parachute effect was produced.  The pilot climbed back in the plane and it splashed down gently in the Atlantic Ocean.  Apparently the recovery effort caused more damage then the splash down.  If anyone knows anything more about this, please email me.  If you are interested in unusual aircraft built by craftsmen, you ought to go to OshKosh or Sun-n-Fun, both are EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) sponsored events.  It's a little expensive, but worth it.

This is the Great Lakes! An RV-8 (Photo from Van's website) A Lancair IV-P (owned by Jim Bartel of LA) A Long-EZ from Long-EZ.com