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/339662
12 Vol.3 No.7 / July 2014 CHAMPION FOR A DAY ONCE IN A WHILE, you run across a homebuilt airplane that teaches us so much about life, in so many ways, that it's hard to know where to start telling its tale. Such is the case with Edgar "Ed" Marrero and his Acey Deucy. The man, the airplane, and their history together combine to tell us all something about sport aviation and the people who populate one of the most unique communities on the planet. Just telling Ed's life story is complicated because the only constant throughout was that it was continually changing. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, he came to the United States specifically to join the U.S. Army, where in the beginning, he spent seven years crewing M-60A1 tanks before going on to flight training. However, that's an over-simplification be- cause it glosses over what was happening in the background: a growing fascination with airplanes that was inspired by his father. As Ed remembers it, "I was 10 or 11 years old when I saw a Popular Mechanics magazine with the headline 'Build Your Own Airplane at Your House.' My dad wanted to have an air- plane, but having four sons made money tight; so all he could do was dream about it. Just about every Saturday he would take us to the airport in San Juan to 'rub airplanes.' I thought that maybe we could build an airplane because my dad was very mechanically inclined. So, I saved my daily 5 cents allowance until I could buy the magazine. When I showed him the maga- zine, his fi rst comment was 'You're crazy,' but after reading the article, he said that he would give it some thought. He ordered the brochures for the Jungster I and Cavalier, both all-wood aircraft. When the brochures arrived, they gave my dad a cou- ple of contacts for people building Jungster II airplanes in the island. These guys basically convinced him to build a Starduster Too, so he ordered the plans. "As we started to work on the airplane, he involved everyone in the family, including my mom. He would make you feel really good when you came up with a solution to a problem as we were building. This is probably the reason why all of my broth- ers and me became pilots." The tornado destroyed all the stringers and the standoffs. The instrument panel and its detail are not something normally associated with an open-cockpit parasol; that's one of many reasons the airplane has won so many awards. E A A E X P _ J u l y 1 4 . i n d d 1 2 EAAEXP_July14.indd 12 7 / 1 / 1 4 9 : 5 3 A M 7/1/14 9:53 AM