Jim's Rotorway Exec. Project

At the Beginning
My dream to have a helicopter someday goes back to my young days as a boy on Bethel Island, Ca. The time frame is 1956 and I was only 11 years old. At the time we (my family) lived on a ranch out in the middle of nowhere and I would lay in the back yard and dream about how great it would be to be able to fly a helicopter between the ranch and my grandparents home some 2 miles away by road.

It was around this time frame that I saw a Benson Gyro-copter in a popular mechanics magazine. Wow! My eyes got so bright eyed that I couldn’t sleep for days. My dream was about to come true. So I thought, fore after all, I was only 11.

Anyway, I saved up my allowance money over the next several weeks and sent off for the construction plans that cost me a lot of money, a whole five dollars. No did I know it would be some 33 years before I would really get one. But instead of a Gyro-copter, it was the first kit of 9 to a Rotorway Exec. Helicopter. I’ve been working on it ever since.

At the beginning – 13 years latter
Thirteen years latter, my dream to fly still burned inside of me. I still have never flown in any type of flying machine, but the dream of having a Gyro-copter wasn’t far away in my dreams.

But the war in Viet Nam was still going strong and I had just turned 24 years old. Which meant my Student deferment was over. It didn’t take Uncle Sam long to get my draft notice to me. So I went down to the Recruiting office to see what options I had before leaving to serve my country.

The Army recruiter suggested that I join the Army for three years and go into their Electronic program since I had just graduated from Diablo Valley College with an AA in Electronics. This meant I would still go to Viet Nam and carry a radio on my back, but without the gun.

So what’s a young AA degree boy to do? Will I went over to the Air Force recruiter to see if I could still join the Air Force, even though I have been drafted. After taking a battery of test, I was qualified to go into their Electronic program and that’s how I ended up in the Air Force.

Anyway, while at Kessler AFB, (13 months of tech school) I joined the Aero Club and began taking flying lessons. Although I never got my pilots license (Certificate is what it really is) while in the Air Force, my dream of a gyro-copter faded for a new dream.

It was at Davis Mont hen AFB, Arizona (my first base out of tech school) that I saw my first home build helicopter. A fellow airmen and I, with our dates were driving to Phoenix to watch a Led Zeppelin concert. As we were driving, past Tempe Arizona, I happen to notice a show room off the freeway. This show room turned out to be RotorWay Cooperation headquarters. And in this show room window was a Scorpion I helicopter.

Will right then and their, I fell out of love for a gyro-copter and in love with a experimental helicopter. I knew someday I would have one.

4 years in the Air Force and still no pilot license
While stationed at my last base in the Air Force (this is my sixth base in four years) Pope AFB in Fayetteville North Carolina, I once again joined the aero club to pursue my pilot license. So why haven’t I got it already, it’s been three years since I began flying lessons.

Will what happen was that every time a got to the point to take my check ride something would happen? First off, at Kessler, I wasn’t ready to take the check ride. Then at Davis Mont hen, I didn’t take any lessons (although I was in their areo club) for I was going to be there for only 6 months for On the Job train. — My carrier field was in Inertial and Radar Navigation Systems on the F4 phantom Jet and the C-130 Black Birds –

Next it was off to Missawa Japan for 18 months, plenty of time to get my license, so I thought. So yet another aero club and yet a new instructor to get checked out to sole and continue my training to take the check ride.

In Missawa Japan it starts snowing by November, and never stops. So getting any weather for a student to fly in wasn’t very often. As for me, getting approval to fly 100 mile cross-country was out of the question.

By March I found myself in Kunsan Korea (for our government gave Japan back their bases) and still no check ride. By the time I was ready and scheduled to take the check ride, the monsoon season had begun. This was bad for me, for the check ride examiners come to Korea once ever six months and then for one week.)

My next chance to take my check ride was at Pope AFB. There too I had to get a new instructor and be rechecked out. But it was here that I took on a wife (my girlfriend in Korea) and my attention and money was diverted for a new adventure. But I still manage to continue my flying although at a much slower pace.

By the time I was ready for the check ride, it was the end of my carrier in the Air Force and back to collage to get a BSEE. But I was lucky enough to be scheduled to take the check ride in Reilly North Carolina.

On the day of the check ride, I flew the Cessna 150 to Reilly but to catch the beginning of a bad snowstorm that was a day early. I ended up leaving to plane at the Reilly airport and taking a bus back to the base, for I was processing out of the Air force that same week.

17 more years — gone bye —
It’s 1972 and I just got out of the Air Force to go back to college and get my Bachelors degree in Electronic Engineering. During the next 17 years I didn’t fly for I was busy getting my degree, then a job and raising a family.

One day in 1989, I had plenty of money coming in the house hold and I told myself, “boy you’re getting up their in the ages, so if you ever want to fly again, now is the time to start.” But I didn’t have a lot of motivation going, just some daydreaming.

In the summer of 1989, my daughter and I went to the Livermore (near San Francisco, east bay.) air show. At one spot on the field was this big trailer and my curiosity got to me. So I went up to this trailer and looked inside. Will my eyes popped right out of my head. There in front of me was Rotorways latest helicopter, the rotorway Exec.

Now that little spark caught my paints on fire. Not only was there a Rotorway helicopter in California, it was in my back yard. While talking with the owner of this helicopter, I meant other guys that had them too and that their was a club right here on the field.

A few weeks latter I was invited to one of the guys home in Fremont, California to look at his Scorpion and to watch videos of him flying it. After that it was only a few more weeks and I had the first group of “Nine” kits to the Rotorway Exec. Helicopter and my age-old dream rekindled into a forest fire.

A year latter, I joined the local flying club and this time I got my pilots license.

The conclusion to — My dream to fly —
Once upon a time, their was this little boy that dreamed of flying a helicopter from his home to his grandparents home a long, long, time ago. But this dream was never to be, for the grandparent’s dead off one bye one of old age. And over time this young boy grew into a man (age wise, but still a boy) and other priorities began to occupy his thoughts and time.

First there was high school then collage and the Viet Nam war. More college, a wife and daughter, not to mention a job too. So here it is 1990 and this boy is flying, although not a helicopter yet, but is building his own Rotorway Exec.

Will everything was great until 1994 when I lost my job of 19 1/2 years due to Government Military cut backs. My company went from around 30,000 down to around 10,000 in four weeks. I was among the first group to go because of the years with the company.

With no money coming in I had to lay off the flying and I lost interest in working on my helicopter project. Three years latter I had a part time job at the airport (had to get away from the wife) and my wife had a Deli in Hayward. The part time job brought in enough extra money that I could start flying again, at least once a month. As far as the helicopter project went, I just couldn’t get interested in working on it again.

In 2004 (10′s years, gone by without working on it) this all changed when a new member in our helicopter club lit the candle under me. Since then I have started the engine and began working on the body. You can hear and see more of starting the engine by clicking on the You Tube video link “Re-birth of an engine”. This short story is told through the eyes of the engine.

The other video “the trip home” is about bringing the helicopter back home from Clear Lake where the engine was started and run for the first time. This story is also told through the eyes of the engine that I named “Evin”, short for Evinrude Outboard engine.

From this point on, this blog will be about my progress on building my Rotorway Exec. Along the way will be more video (e-stories) and perhaps some of my other flying adventures.