DATE: Thursday, October 9, 1997             TAG: 9710080168

SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN             PAGE: 06   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COVER STORY 

SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  100 lines

TO FLYOVER A DECADE AGO, BILL RUMBURG THOUGHT ABOUT BUILDING HIS OWN PLANE. ON OCT. 21, HIS ``GIRLFRIEND FOR EIGHT YEARS'' WILL TAKE TO THE AIR.

BILL RUMBURG recalls when the thought of building his own plane first soared through his mind.

It was more than a decade ago, when his father - a fighter pilot in World War II - handed him a magazine advertising planes in a box. A couple of years later, he ordered one.

It was the urge to fly that drove him, he says.

Or perhaps it was a longing for adventure - the same kind of excitement he felt when he surfed the waves of the Outer Banks as a teenager.

``You know, I think that might be the first place I'll go, as soon as I get this thing in the air,'' he said recently. ``Yeah, I'll just fly down to the beach.''

The 47-year-old electrical engineer has invested a small fortune in his aircraft, ``. . . my girlfriend for eight years.''

It took eight months just for the order to arrive.

In April 1989, a huge crate - about the size of a double-long coffin - arrived at his front door. ``It was hard to believe there was an airplane in there.''

There wasn't. Not exactly.

The box, for which he paid about $35,000, was filled mostly with plastic peanuts and a chassis.

Rumburg found that the box eventually would represent about one-third of his investment. There were still an engine, a control panel, seats, upholstery and lots of other essentials to buy.

The chassis in the model Rumburg selected is built for an engine between 150 and 180 horsepower. He chose a 160 hp engine, purchased from an engine re-builder in Orlando, Fla.

``It's like a little car with wings on it,'' he said, smiling fondly at the craft he's christened the ``Sonic Boom.''

``It's experimental,'' he said. Black letters over the cockpit repeat the word.

Rumburg spent an average of 20 hours a week, every week of all the eight years he's worked on the project. Day in, day out, the same schedule: leave his job in Norfolk; arrive at the Suffolk Airport - where he's rented a hangar - about 5 or 5:30; work until at least 9 p.m.. Recently, he moved to Suffolk to be closer to his project.

When the mechanical work was near an end, Rumburg searched for the perfect paint job. He found it in Pennsylvania, loaded the plane onto a flatbed trailer and shipped his prize possession north.

It returned with a glistening, metallic acqua coat with mauve and silver stripes that reflect the rays of the sun and a bill for $12,000.

Rumburg purchased the kit from Lancair International in Redmond, Ore., one of the leaders in the industry. With five models, Lancair sells about 120 kits a year, said Mike Schrader, in charge of sales.

For Rumburg's plane, as it does for every craft it sells, the company will provide a test flight pilot and inspection before the plane is officially released to the owner.

Statistics show that home-built airplanes are ``every bit as safe as manufactured planes,'' said John Burton, director of corporate communications for the Experimental Aircraft Association, an aviation organization with a focus on design, construction and restoration.

The appeal, Burton said, is the ``unique freedom of flight'' experimentals provide.

``The passion for flight very often leads someone who can't afford a manufactured plane to build his own,'' he said. ``It covers every economic range.''

At the 45th annual EAA fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisc. this summer, 840,000 experimental planes participated in week-long exercises.

And Rumburg isn't alone in Hampton Roads. There are several hand-built, experimental planes based at the Hampton Roads Airport on U.S. Route 58 in Chesapeake, he said.

George Shell, a Navy chief and Rumburg's hangar neighbor at the Suffolk Airport, is building two of the planes.

There are fewer FAA requirements for experimentals, and the engines are as happy with automotive fuel as they are with more expensive aviation fuel. The price of insurance compares to automobile insurance.

Time, Rumburg said, is the greatest investment.

``They tell you that you'll invest from 3,000 to 4,000 hours,'' he said. ``The truth is, it's more like 5,000 or 6,000 hours.''

The Sonic Boom, which has already had a ground-level test, will have its inaugural flight at 9 a.m. Oct. 21. A test pilot from the company will take it up first. Then, that same pilot will certify two local pilots to give Rumburg additional flight instruction.

Because of their speed and size, the experimentals are a little trickier to fly than manufactured planes.

Rumburg is nervous about finally getting airborne.

``There are lots of bugs in the kit,'' he said. ``A builder has to solve them as he goes along.

``But - oh, my gosh - are the wheels going to fall off? There are a million things to think about.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos including color cover by JOHN H. SHEALLY

II

Bill Rumburg says his first trip in the plane he built and

christened the Sonic Boom may be to the Outer Banks.

Bill Rumburg rolls his dream machine out of its hangar at Suffolk

Municipal Airport.

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