Mid ‘70s homebuilt?

Matthew

Matthew

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Matthew
I don’t know why I remembered this:

Back in the mid 70s there was a neighborhood guy building a plane in his garage. We were pretty itinerant back then and moved away not too long after we got there. I wasn’t able to follow his progress and I don’t really remember much about it.

What were the popular garage-built airplanes back then? And, of the ones eventually completed, are many of them still flying?
 
Early 1970s, lots of people bought BD-5 kits but few ever finished them. Late 70s the Vari-EZ was the big thing. Nothing like today's bolt-together kit scene but lots of scratchbuilds, especially wood designs and small biplanes.
 
Years ago (this had to be around 1991 or so), I joined a flying club based at IAD (Armel Aviation). The woman who ran it gave me directions to her house so I could pick up some paperwork (she lived only about a mile from me, we both were about 3-4 miles from the airport). She described the house and everything, but when I got over there, the prominent feature she hadn't mentioned was that there was an airplane in the garage (her husband was rebuilding a Stinson 108). Down the street from me in my own neighborhood there was a guy building a Seawind.
 
Matthew said:
I don’t know why I remembered this:

Back in the mid 70s there was a neighborhood guy building a plane in his garage. We were pretty itinerant back then and moved away not too long after we got there. I wasn’t able to follow his progress and I don’t really remember much about it.

What were the popular garage-built airplanes back then? And, of the ones eventually completed, are many of them still flying?
Click to expand...
Fly Baby, Pietenpol, Thorp T-18, Stits Playboy/Playmate, and any number of other older plans-built designs. Some of the more modern designs might be a possibility, depending on when in the mid-70s one is talking about...Bede BD-4 and BD-5, Varieze and Variviggen, even the RV-3.

I took a look at the January 2024 FAA registry. The average homebuilt on the active registry is about 20 years old. Of about 28,000 total homebuilts, about 1700 were completed before 1980. This is the active registry...the aircraft may not actually BE flyable, but the owner wishes to keep the registration active.

So...most of the homebuilts around in the mid-70s are gone.

The list of deregistered aircraft might be of more interest; it includes both the date of completion as well as when it was removed from the registry. There, the average homebuilt was about 24 years old when it was removed from the registry. However, when the FAA implemented the requirement that owners had to renew their registrations every three years (since expanded to seven), LOTS of homebuilts disappeared off the registry in the 2010-2014 time span About 20% of the fleet came off the rolls in that time period.
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Ron Wanttaja
 
The KR series was popular at that time, along with the Thorpe T-18 and several biplanes.
 
This would have been 75-76. I remember seeing parts of it in his garage so it could have already been several years old at that time.
 
Whitman Tailwind, Nesmith Cougar, Wag Aero, WAR replicas, Piel Emaraude, Pitts, Christan Eagle, Dyke Delta, Taylor Mini Imp, Starduster, Skybolt, Sonerai.

Yes, I'm old
 
When I was a kid in the late 70s/early 80s I remember seeing a guy in the neighborhood working on a plane in his garage. I wish I could go back in time as an adult and talk to him about it. As a little kid there's no way I'd have approached a stranger like that.
 
I can barely remember but I don’t think it was a biplane. That’s pretty much the extent of what I can picture in my head.
 
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