Many thanks go out to Mike Butterfield and the Crew at Yakima Aerosport. Building your own airplane can be a daunting and time consuming task. If you have any questions about building your own plane (especially if it’s a Piper), then Mike can offer you a lot of insight. This guy has been building Piper airplanes for a long time and the knowledge he has to share is priceless. There wasn’t anything this guy couldn’t answer for me and I never could have built this plane without his expertise.

THANK YOU, MIKE! You’re the best.

The Crew at Yakima Aerosport put an interesting idea in my head: window-doors.

I thought this was extraordinary. Why settle for an opaque door when you can essentially have a window that goes from the wing to the floorboard? This gives the back seat riders a reason to want to sit in the back and it makes the rear cabin much less “claustrophobic”.

UPDATE! This is what the doors look like on the finished plane.

Either my digital camera or hard drive failed me because I had several pix of the Lycoming O-360 sitting on the bench. I can’t find them anywhere! It’s been painted orange to match the rest of the plane. When I find them I’ll post them.

Wing day was finally here. There wasn’t much progress, but this is the sight I’ve been envisioning for sooooo long and now I get to see it. Everyone stood around in awe, admiring my soon-to-be-flying piece of art.

Yes, that little boy playing in the cockpit is me!

It’s not delicate work, but it does involve patience. Smaller hands and fingers make it easier to work through the inspection cover holes.

We found what looked to be a very nice Tri-Pacer fuselage and removed the flat metal to comply with 819. People should know that there’s a reason for that service bulletin, and I got to see why. Every tube under flat metal was replaced and a few more that had pits. Every time “The Crew” made a pass over this thing, they were finding more work for me to do. Oh well…. Measure, cut, fit, grind, fit, grind, fit, and weld.

While we were here we tried to do every mod known to man, left door, skylight, Cub gear. etc.

Here are the wings, fresh from the paint booth done in Stitts Poly Tone, Pumkin Orange. Aren’t they pretty?

The leading edge slot, long-range fuel tank covers, and inspection covers are not painted. I prefer the polished aluminum look, so anyone looking at these wings, will see that these are not your standard Pacer wings and the inspection covers are so much easier to find….