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
22 Vol.3 No.2 / Februar y 2014 RETURN OF A HOMEBUILT LEGEND to be the only scale Wright Flyer engine that ran. It is now out west in a museum." The Butler retractable Midget Mustang that was grand champion both in '73 and '74 never left the public eye. Lew bought it, and when he saw that fellow Mustang lover and close friend Nancy Pierce of Dallas loved the airplane as much as he did, he let her buy it (while he retained fl ying rights). He knew Nancy was going to provide a good home for it. She still has it. The fi rst Butler grand champion, N955Z, however, didn't share the good fortune of the retract. In fact, for all intents and purposes, except for a few locals knowing of its existence, it disappeared. All that appeared to remain of the airplane was its legend—and the image it had left in many minds via a cover on the December '64 issue of Sport Aviation. Enter Lew Shaw. Before hitting a home run in real estate and construction, Lew had a ridiculously intense background in aviation. Ini- tially he was turned down for fl ight training while in the U.S. Air Force (USAF), but that didn't stop him. He borrowed the money to learn to fl y and eventually badgered the powers-that- be into letting him into fl ight training. While he was in fl ight training, he bought a Swift, which led to a long string of sport aircraft and warbirds that greatly expanded after he got out of the Air Force. Lew said that from his earliest days as a pilot the Midget Mustang always fl itted around the edges of his thoughts. "There are few designs that have brought more dreams to pilots than the Midget Mustang. 'Out of the sun, with the piper on, tracking the evil Nazi in his Messerschmitt attacking the bomber stream…' (quoting from The Rise of the Fourth Reich). "I drooled over Butler's retract plane at Oshkosh in the early '70s, asking a lot of silly questions. But when I looked at it the next day, he had one wing folded, and I almost fell over! Where was the joint line on the wing? Unbelievable craftsmanship! I had bent metal pieces for my Swift. I put the fi rst P-51-style gear leg fairings on one. But I had never seen any workmanship like Butler's Midget Mustang. And I still haven't seen better. That's why, when the airplane came up for sale, I pounced on it. I had to have it in my hangar. "I knew about his fi rst airplane, but I had yet to meet anyone who knew what had happened to it. Then, while on a trip to Phoenix about 15 years ago, I was hangar-bumming on a weekend and saw a distinctive tail sticking up from an open 16-by-4-by-4 box. I asked if it was a Midget Mustang. The owner told me it was an EAA grand champion Midget built by Lloyd Butler. That was it! I had to have the fi rst one he built if for no other reason than to preserve it. I absolutely couldn't believe I'd stumbled across it!" According to Lew, the airplane had been put on its nose with various attempts at fi xing it, none of them holding up to the quality of the original work. However, he said, "I was told all the parts were there; of course, they weren't…so I made a deal that started a very long rebuild." The airplane had no corrosion because, Lew said, "The build work by Butler was so thorough as to keep the airplane going for 100 years. But it had post-Butler work on it that needed to be redone, and all the systems and small parts were missing. I tried to do some work on it myself with my me- chanic, but that and other ef orts went nowhere. Finally, after fi ve years of start and stop, I hired Nelson Ezell, EAA 484845, in Breckenridge, Texas, to fi nish it. He did it for two reasons: friendship of 25 years and to help preserve the work and beauty of Lloyd Butler as it deserves." Working on an airplane like the Midget Mustang was far outside of Nelson's normal fi eld of endeavor. Known internationally for his warbird restorations (see www. EzellAviation.com ), he has brought dozens (maybe hundreds) of warbirds back to life, from Mustangs and Bearcats to the fantas- tically detailed Red Bull P-38. Often the aircraft he begins with are barely recognizable as airplanes. So, the Butler Mustang looked wildly out of place in his huge rebuild facility. However, among Lew's long list of owned aircraft are four P-51 Mustangs (the full-sized kind), most of which had spent time in Nelson's shop. Both Nelson and Lew appreciated high-quality work, so the baby Mustang became a "fi ll-in" project that was fi t in between the major warbird projects as time allowed. Lew said, "Although the airplane had suf ered from the years of storage and handling, it had been modifi ed very little. Just the carb inlet and the panel were dif erent. I didn't change it, either. I wanted to keep it simple, like a sport plane should be. Modern safety features like better brakes, exhaust, and fuel systems were included in the rebuild, but a small transponder, a small transceiver with a GPS, and an all-in-one engine and nav unit made the airplane more usable." T e name Jim Lloyd Butler is normally only known within the ranks of hardcore homebuilders who have more than a little gray in their hair. Photography by Phil High Jim Butler modifi ed his second Midget Mustang, also a champion airplane, to have folding wings and retractable landing gear and left it polished and unpainted. E A A E X P _ F e b 1 4 . i n d d 2 2 EAAEXP_Feb14.indd 22 2 / 3 / 1 4 3 : 1 6 P M 2/3/14 3:16 PM