The Evolution of Homebuilding: From Scratch to Sophisticated

The very first successful homebuilt aircraft was assembled by two brothers in the bustling “town of inventors,” Dayton, Ohio, way back in 1903. A true “one-off,” they drew their own plans, did their own research, created methods of construction previously unknown, and even had a new engine designed and built from scratch. Everyone who has since built an airplane in their garage, workshop, or hangar owes a debt to the Wright brothers for setting an example of “how to build an airplane.”

For the first couple decades of powered heavier-than-air flight, there were few (if any) regulatory controls in place when it came to building an airplane. You bought or drew plans, learned by poking around someone else’s machine, found materials, and built. When it was finished, you took it aloft—with or without actual pilot training. I have on my desk a set of reproduction annual magazines from the late 1920s and early 1930s that were published under the title of Flying Manual. The subtitle was “The Sport Plane Authority of America.” These pages contain countless ideas and techniques for building your own airplane—and many people did just that!

The creation of the United States Civil Aeronautics Board brought order out of chaos, certification out of experimentation, and put a temporary stop to the “build and fly it without regulation” phase of experimental flying machines. That ended in the late 1950s when the Experimental/Amateur-Built category was created, allowing people to build and fly their own airplanes if they did so for the purposes of “education and recreation.” No commercial use of these airplanes was (or is) allowed, but wow—have they evolved!

The early homebuilding movement of the late 1950s and into the 1960s was one of relatively slow and underpowered machines welded up of steel tube or built from wood, covered in fabric, and powered with surplus motors built by Continental … or Ford. Builders started from scratch, buying wood, steel tubing, and hardware as they could find it. There were no kits at the time—you had to buy “a la carte” and use your native mechanical ability to get things right—or at least right enough to get your machine to fly. When I started working on airplanes in the early 1970s, there was a broken-down hangar at the edge of the field, almost in the woods, that housed some sort of rag-and-tube homebuilt put together by a bunch of guys. It was estimated that it flew an hour for every 10 hours of fixing and preparation—and that was homebuilding!

Homebuilders of that era were the guys who took shop class instead of calculus back in high school—they knew how to work materials, use a lathe, weld, and could tell a 7/8-inch from a half-inch wrench with their eyes closed. They built their own hot rods, then moved on to an airplane—just to see if they could do it. Completing a homebuilt aircraft was almost a superhuman task and something few accomplished.

But in the 1970s, dedicated engineers came along—guys like VanGrunsven, Rutan, Christensen, and Heintz. They not only designed and perfected good aircraft, they figured out how to provide the builder with more than just a set of plans and a bill of materials—they created the first actual aircraft kits. In so doing, they captured an untapped market of folks who wanted to build their own airplane—either for the challenge or because they couldn’t afford a certified machine, the prices of which exceeded the price of a modest home. The kits opened up homebuilding to those without the skills of a farm fabricator — you didn’t get raw pieces of steel, you got “weldments”—things like motor mounts and roll bars that only needed primer and paint. Square sheets of aluminum gave way to precut—and often preformed—parts. Boxes of hardware, kits for electrical systems, and pre-blown canopies made the talents of the hunter-gatherer obsolete—everything you needed was in the box.

As homebuilding grew in popularity, the capabilities of homebuilt aircraft grew by leaps and bounds. No longer low and slow airplanes, the latest kits became fast-traveling machines—aircraft that could cross large swaths of countryside in a day. The kit builders responded with more complex kits and systems for those kits to support advanced avionics and instrument flight. Homebuilts could now replace the “spam cans” as useful machines—not just toys to use to go find a $100 hamburger. Designers figured out how to make the kits even easier to build, with prepunched holes in aluminum kits and preformed fuselage halves and wing skins for composite aircraft. Modern kit builders can buy a complete tool kit tailored for their make and model aircraft—they don’t even have to collect tools from obscure sources. Sure, you could still buy plans and a box of spruce to build a classic wooden airplane—but that kind of skill was no longer mainstream … it became niche.

Thousands of homebuilts were completed in the 2000s and 2010s—most of them more capable than the trainers private pilots used to learn to fly and easily able to make the migration to AirVenture each July, from any coast. A thousand homebuilts showed up each year in this time frame, many going on display for the first time at the show, presented by their proud builders. By the time the 2020s rolled around, kits had become so sophisticated (along with their build manuals) that you simply could not “build them from plans”—the company gave you parts that you assembled into subassemblies with which you built an airplane. You don’t have enough information (i.e., mechanical drawings) to build the parts—if you mess one up, you have to buy it from the factory. The prepunched parts are so good that if the parts of a metal plane don’t Cleco together right out of the box, you are assembling them wrong.

What has been gained is the ability for the average builder—someone who didn’t grow up on their grandfather’s farm (or in their father’s auto-repair shop)—to build airplanes that are capable of transporting their family across the country, even in bad weather. What many bemoan as a loss is the skill of fabrication, the art of design, and the creative problem-solving it takes to design a fault-tolerant electrical system. Homebuilder forums no longer have questions about how to beef up a wing for aerobatics but abound with questions about why part F-8087 doesn’t seem to fit with part 8-006 like it should. Someone then inevitably points out that 8087 is for the left side, while -006 is for the right. Wiring looms come complete and simply have to be run through the aircraft—but the forums are full of questions about how to properly put the connectors on the ends of the wires. No one asks if the wire gauge is correct for the run length, or if they should use a shielded twisted pair for their strobe lights—they simply use what the factory gave them.

And that brings us to the future. The real question that we have to ask is if people want airplanes—or if people want projects. I always advise someone that if they have to ask if they should build or buy a homebuilt aircraft, they definitely should look for one to buy—because if you have to ask if you should build, then you don’t have the unexplainable need to build. If you want an airplane, just buy one. Sure, some of the latest kits have few flying examples, and none of them for sale—so even if you don’t really want the multiyear commitment of a build, you have to do it if you want the plane. Frankly, that can be a grind. But if what you want out of a homebuilt is the pure joy (along with the utter frustration) of building—then a modern kit will build fast—one from 20 years ago (always for sale—many uncompleted) will satisfy the itch. And if you want to start with a Sitka spruce seedling to grow the tree that will become your wooden spars, then sit back and enjoy the trials and tribulations of scratchbuilding.

The bottom line is that there are no “right” answers. Modern kits are incredibly complete and help the inexperienced builder make it to the end—but they cost a lot more than in the old days. Aviation has never been cheap, but building your own plane used to be an economical way in. It’s still cheaper today to build than buy a “spam can”—but the prices can be breathtaking, with a number of popular large homebuilts approaching the half-million-dollar mark when put up for sale.

In the end, however, homebuilding is a big tent—whether you are finally getting around to building that Pietenpol or Cubby or are going all-in on an IFR RV-10, there are kindred spirits all around the world of homebuilding who care not what you are building—just that you are in the shop. They (we) are there to help, to guide, to teach … and to console (yes, you’re going to ruin parts!). But no matter what you build, it is still a significant achievement to put your name down as “manufacturer” when you register the machine, and see it take to the air for the first time. Homebuilding has grown and changed, but the essence has remained the same—a long and winding road from the bike shop in Dayton, right to your garage.