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/287214
4 Vol.3 No.4 / April 2014 ONE HIDDEN LITTLE PLACE on the EAA grounds is the Aeroplane Factory. If you didn't know where to look, you had no chance of finding it. It is hidden in Camp Scholler behind, of all things, a port-a-potty staging area. It is part of a larger building that provides cold storage for EAA museum artifacts. For as long as I've worked at EAA, which is going on 14 years, it has been EAA Founder Paul Poberezny's workshop. Paul always had a project going in the Aeroplane Fac- tory. In fact, he was working on a Baby Ace right up until his passing last August. You would usually find more fuse- lages than wings because Paul liked to weld. Oftentimes, the completed fuselage would get sold off so another one could get started. Sometimes the aircraft would be built to completion. Paul often spoke of the benefits of using your "hand and mind" to construct an aircraft. He understood how a person grew as an individual from homebuilding. Maybe it was because he wasn't particularly interested in school that he knew what homebuilding had to offer in the form of learning. For me, the Aeroplane Factory is hallowed ground. This is where our "homebuilder in chief " spent many an hour building aircraft. Of course, since it was Paul's workshop, it has a homey feel with lots of photos on the wall of different aircraft and volunteers from over the years. With Paul's passing, the question of what would be- come of the Aeroplane Factory arose. Would it be used for more museum storage? Well, I'm thrilled to share with you that we will be rededicating the Aeroplane Factory as a facility for teach- ing homebuilding. Many of our members have enjoyed attending our SportAir Workshops that are dedicated to teaching members how to build aircraft. The Aeroplane Factory will become the new home for our SportAir Workshops. We will use one-third of it for housing our supplies, and the remainder will be a classroom and shop area for holding our workshops. We will preserve as much of the look and feel of Paul's shop as possible as a tribute to him and to let our students get a glimpse into his life. We will also rename it "Paul's Aeroplane Factory" in his honor. The first workshops scheduled for our new SportAir home will be a "Van's RV Assembly" course on July 29 to 30 and an "Electrical Systems and Avionics" course on July 31 to August 1, both during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2014. The dedication of this building to further the home- building education of our members is something of which we all should be proud. Although EAA serves all of sport aviation, this action demonstrates that homebuilding is still front and center. The fact that this also will keep Paul's workshop intact for future EAA members to enjoy makes it even better. Hallowed Ground Paul's Aeroplane Factory rededicated to homebuilding workshops BY CHARLIE BECKER HOMEBUILDER'S CORNER Paul and Charlie at the Aeroplane Factory. E A A E X P _ A p r 1 4 . i n d d 4 EAAEXP_Apr14.indd 4 3 / 3 1 / 1 4 9 : 4 0 A M 3/31/14 9:40 AM