THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 17, 1994 TAG: 9410170048
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
When you're strapped in the passenger seat of Walter M. Post's brand new plane, your eyes are drawn to the PASSENGER WARNING high on the instrument panel.
This aircraft is amateur-built and does not comply with the federal safety regulations for ``standard aircraft.''
The amateur who built the plane is Post, 55, a retired Navy master chief now employed at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard repairing code equipment.
He just finished building the two-seat, single-engine plane in the double garage attached to his two-story house in the Fox Run neighborhood.
All that stands between him and his first flight is an an inspection by the Federal Aviation Administration, probably soon, and some refresher flying time in a trainer plane. He's been too busy building his own plane the past 17 months to fly.
This month, Post taxied his plane, and it worked great on the ground. The doors flew open, but he fixed that.
There was the time this year that a neighbor across the street came home to find part of a propeller on his roof. When Post had revved the engine in his driveway, the plane had pitched forward, breaking off blades and arcing part of one across the street.
But if you met Post, if you saw his photographs detailing the care he took building the plane, if you noted the precision of the bright blue-and-red paint job and heard the engine purr, and if you took into account the fact Navy master chiefs are among the most competent humans on the planet, you might go up with him - as long as you could keep your eyes off the PASSENGER WARNING.
Post said his first step in building the plane was to buy his wife a 1.8-carat diamond ring.
``It's hard to say no,'' he said, ``to somebody who would buy you something like that.''
That was Christmas 1992. The next month he bought himself a plane kit, though ``kit'' is too strong a word.
What arrived at his house two months later was a 4x4x14-foot wooden box with materials inside.
Under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, at least 51 percent of the plane parts have to be fabricated by the amateur building the plane.
The instrument panel, for example, was a metal plate. Post figured where to put different instruments and cut the holes.
For the wings, he wrapped Dacron, an artificial fabric, around frames he built. He heated the material with an household iron till it shrank tight - too tight to rip in the wind, most likely.
Weekdays he worked on the plane from 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., before going off to the second shift at the shipyard. Weekends he worked all day. His wife, Junko, was supportive, he said. ``There weren't a lot of honey-do things,'' he said. He figures he worked about 1,200 hours on the plane. That's the equivalent of 30 40-hour weeks.
Post grew up on the Oregon coast, the son of a logger. He inherited his mechanical ability, he said, from his mother, who fixed everything that broke around the house.
After high school he joined the Navy. In 1982, he retired from the Mount Whitney, command ship for the 2nd Fleet, and went to work at the shipyard.
Back in 1968, he began building and flying radio-control model planes. ``They are toys,'' he said, ``but it's not easy.''
In 1976 in Orlando, Fla., he started flying with his brother, a pilot.
He joined flying clubs and longed to have his own plane. But, there were two children to put through college, then money to be saved.
The kit cost about $16,000. Altogether he spent $27,000 on the plane. He added an automatic pilot and a device that, among many other things, automatically tells him the 10 closest airports, their distances and bearing, their landing surfaces, the types of fuel sold, and radio frequencies. He put a radio button atop the control stick, so he can fly and operate the radio with one hand.
``You can buy a used airplane for less than it cost to built this,'' he said. ``You don't do it to save money. You do it for the sense of accomplishment.''
He did everything but one step by himself. A friend helped hold the wings when he attached them to the body. Only once did he call the kit's manufacturer in Caldwell, Idaho, for instructions.
He said he felt great taxiing his plane and expects to feel greater the first time he flies it.
The plane is 21 feet long, with a 32-foot wingspan. The wings can be swung lengthwise, over the fuselage, so the plane will fit in a single garage, or next to a car in a double garage. Post keeps the plane in his garage, next to a Chrysler LeBaron, and tows it on a small trailer to an airport.
The plane weighs 630 pounds empty and can carry 570 pounds, including fuel. Post said it could carry a 215-pound pilot, a 150-pound passenger, and 40 pounds of luggage with enough fuel to last 6 hours and go 600 miles. It burns about 4 gallons of premium car gasoline an hour at a cruising speed of 100 mph. Top speed is 125 and top altitude is 16,000 feet.
``It's been my whole life for the past year and a half,'' he said. ``What I really want is to have this when I retire.''
One child lives in Manassas, the other in Atlanta. He'll be dropping in. ILLUSTRATION: His hard work takes wing
[Color Photo]
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
Walter Post's home-built plane took 17 months to assemble and set
him back about $27,000. He will be able to fly it after it passes an
FAA inspection. He says he built the plane ``for the sense of
accomplishment.''
by CNB