Well, it’s the end of year two and we’re still moving ahead full throttle! This photo of the plane in our yard is representative of one year’s work. When I think of it that way it doesn’t seem bad at all. Although I have worked steadily on our rebel, we did take some time off from building and got in a trip to Hawaii, bear viewing at McNeil River (Google that), Oshkosh, and some other things over the course of the year. I’m still experiencing the same headaches with the builder manual and even the factory although I find myself asking for/needing help much less than last year. And again, the fellows on the builder’s site have been invaluable. Although it’s been done, I believe it’d be a tough go for a beginner to build this plane without any outside help. Probably one of the biggest challenges for me on the fuselage was the eight corner wraps. One end is bent at a ninety and the other is a curve! And I also upgraded them to thicker pieces so it was that much harder…especially the .032 ones (builders know what I’m talking about). There’s at least six junk corner wraps in my “pile” that weren’t right. Another gift I gave myself was waiting until I had built the front of the fuselage to decide to shorten it by three inches, a factory recommendation for large engines and/or floats. It was twice as hard doing it this way and I had to remake several pieces. Deb says I will have built two planes by the time I’m finished. A highlight of this year was finding and buying an amphib float kit still in the box. Probably the biggest reason I learned to fly was to be on floats and I’m looking forward to the build on those. One of my favorite things about building is laying out parts to be made, figuring out how to accomplish some required step, and getting to do it myself. I think it’s that part of building my own plane that I like the most. The person that buys a Cub or Cessna misses out on this and although building isn’t for everyone, I think many plane owners would like to have more hands-on with their plane. We recently found an engine for our rebel. It’s a Lycoming 0320 and will be the 160 hp version. This is the largest motor recommended by Murphy. After the engine we’ll look at panel options in the spring. There’s a lot of new avionics and GPS equipment coming out everyday. It makes sense to me to wait until the last minute to make a choice. I think I can say with some confidence that we will be flying by this time next year. Actually it might even be closer to July but we’ll have to wait and see. I’m rapidly getting to the point at which I need money more than building time. So for those of you still thinking about building and those who are struggling while building, our highs far outweigh the lows and I wouldn’t change anything!!