Experimenter is a magazine created by EAA for people who build airplanes. We will report on amateur-built aircraft as well as ultralights and other light aircraft.
Issue link: http://experimenter.epubxp.com/i/254584
EAA Experimenter 21 So, from doing his own plans for the control and fuel sys- tems, to the jigs, to making the rollers bend the amazing leading edge, to blowing the canopy, he did it all. He was a body shop guy, bringing life back to bent and broken fenders without Bondo or epoxy. And that's the way he built his airplanes. No filler. No excuses. His second MM-1 that won in both '73 and '74 clearly showed his attention to detail because he polished everything, including the hand- hammered cowl, which under the paint his first Midget had as well. "In those days, to have your own Midget Mustang, you had to be so obsessed, so dedicated, and so determined that only the most undistracted could complete the journey. You had to focus on solving each problem completely to reach the end, one part at a time. There was no instant gratifica- tion or quick-build kit, no matched drilled parts, no easy slab sides for the fuselage. You didn't build a Midget Mustang. You built a part, a rib, or the form to make a rib. I don't think Butler ever looked at a piece of aluminum and saw an air- plane. Like a chunk of stone was for Michelangelo, he saw a rib hidden inside the sheet and had to figure a way to reveal it." Butler's nephew, Jamie Kent, remembers, "Number one was started in a converted chicken coop that leaned against a barn on my grandfather's place. The fuselage and wings were mostly built there before he moved them to a garage/workshop he built behind his own house. "He was a fi x-it kind of guy and had many mechanical skills he picked up from his father and in his jobs, not to mention having a truly logical and imaginative mind. He was a real thinker with a dry sense of humor." Jamie is a professional machinist, so he knows whereof he speaks when he said, "Jim's machining skills were phe- nomenal. He would think out how to accomplish a task with what machinery he had, and that was limited. He would do things that were out of the box, considering what he had to work with. "After he lost his medical, he sold the retract [gear airplane], but he started building running model engines of various types. As I recall, he built nearly 200 of them. He built what is reputed Lew Shaw Intending on fl ying the airplane to as many air shows as practical to spread the Jim Butler legend, Lew Shaw opted for more modern instrumentation. E A A E X P _ F e b 1 4 . i n d d 2 1 EAAEXP_Feb14.indd 21 2 / 3 / 1 4 3 : 1 6 P M 2/3/14 3:16 PM