My name, my plane and my award!
Hi All,
I am a new member to this site so I wanted to introduce myself and tell you about my plane and my Arlington experience. My name is John Kuzmic and I have lived in the Nampa/Caldwell area since 1981.
I am a member of the Caldwell area EAA 103 group that took on the project to build 13 Kitfoxes beginning in late 2001. There is quite a story to tell about that experience and if you corner me some day I am sure I can tell you details that would make you wonder about how we made this work.
In the project I jockeyed for the last position because I wanted to have the most building experience and I wanted to work on my own plane outside of the group experience. You see, I have long dreamed about building my own plane and I was finally going to get that experience and I wanted it to be by my hands as much as I could make it.
So in the summer of 2005 after we finished plane number 12, I formally excused all of the project members from being obligated to work on my plane so I could have the experience of building it myself. Of course there were many times when I needed more than my two hands to complete some of the details and that is when I would call on some of the project members to give me a hand.
I made a fair number of modifications to my project and this took extra time but since I was only doing this once in my lifetime I had definite ideas of how I wanted this plane to be equipped and how I wanted it to look.
Now I took a fair amount of ribbing over all the changes I made and the time it took me to complete the project. Things like my fairings, my interior upholstery, my panel, my 914 engine, my prop, my hidden hinges on the cowling and oil door, my color scheme and of course my 'eagle'. But I never waivered from the picture I had in my mind of how I wanted this plane to look.
Perseverance and my retirement in April 2010 were the prevailing drivers for the completion of my dream.
I received my airworthiness inspection (from the FAA and not a DAR) on June 14th, 2010 and had my 40 hours of testing completed by July 3rd. My first cross country was to Arlington 2010 with the intent to have the plane judged. To make a long story short, I won the 'Reserve Grand Champion' for the 'Custom Kit Built ' category.
What a great experience for beginning with the project build in November of 2001 to the culmination of this award at Arlington in July 2010. Now I am thinking that I will take my turn in dishing out the ribbing.
I have created a picture album of a few select shots.
War Eagle.
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