An Airplane in the Basement

Jimmie Shewmaker's daughters try to keep the garage doors closed. They do not like people to see what is going on in there and say, "Look -- some nut's building an airplane in his garage." But Jim Shewmaker, 39, a salesman for a chemical firm who lives in a quiet suburb of St. Louis, knows he is no nut. He is a practitioner of one of the fastest-growing hobbies in the US.

They call themselves members of the Experimental Aircraft Association, but they are really simply makers of home made airplanes. In the eleven years since the E.A.A. was founded, it has acquired 23,500 members, who have built more than 2,000 airplanes in their basements, garages or carports and have another 4,500 under construction. There are active E.A.A. chapters in all 50 states and 43 foreign countries.

Segregated Air. Most members work from a set of proven plans, but some advanced experimenters lay out their own templates on the garage floor, which they change as they go along. The average plane costs between $1,800 and $2,000 in materials, including a second hand airplane engine or one adapted from a Corvair or Volkswagen. They also cost about 3,000 man-hours, or two or three years of spare time.

Founder and moving spirit of the E.A.A. is Paul H. Poberezny, 43, of Hales Corners, Wis., whose constituents mostly call him "Poop Deck" because who can manage "Poberezny"? Poberezny, who is deputy commander of materiel, 128th Air Refueling Group, Wisconsin Air National Guard, learned to fly at 14 in a glider, flew both fighters and bombers in World War II and Korea. He has built five planes himself. In 1953 he founded the E.A.A. with a group of like-minded friends. "Aviation is one of the last frontiers of individual thinking," he says, "where a man with a few hand tools, steel tubing, and a bit of fabric can build his own aircraft in his own workshop and then take to the air in his own creation."

There are specialists among them. Some, like Actor Cliff Robertson, are interested in refurbishing classic planes (he owns a Messerschmitt, is currently at work on a Spitfire). Others are hipped on "aerobatics," a term they prefer to "stunt flying," and are busy nostalgically building the nimble biplanes that only one commercial company makes any more. E.A.A. planes are "generally smaller, lighter and more sensitive than the factory-built jobs, and more responsive, which is part of the fun of flying," says St. Louis Chapter President Robert E. Gwinn, 41, an aeronautical engineer.

Like racehorse breeders, E.A.A. members keep telling themselves they are improving the breed. On exhibit in the E.A.A.'s new museum near Milwaukee is "the world's smallest plane," designed by Ray Stits of Riverside, Calif., which has a wing spread of only 7 ft. 2 in. but can make 185 m.p.h. Another E.A.A. member built his own single-seat helicopter, flew it 500 miles from Missouri to Rockford, Ill., last summer. In the words of an admiring E.A.A. member, it must have been like "soaring across the country astride a dining-room chair."

Accidents are surprisingly rare. Representatives of the Federal Aviation Agency check each plane in various stages of its development and give it a final going-over just before its maiden flight. As an added precaution, all homemade planes are limited by the FAA to certain segregated portions of air for the first 50 to 75 hours of flying time.

The Other End. The St. Louis Chapter has 35 members--doctors, teachers, engineers and salesmen in their 30s. At least 15 planes are in the works (ten members have joined forces in a single project). The role of an E.A.A. wife is not inconsiderable. "Mine helps when I need someone to hold the other end of something or lift something," says Gwinn. "She also helps with the painting and fabric work." But forbearance is perhaps the cardinal virtue of a woman whose husband has an airplane in gestation. "When you're working with metal, it gets pretty noisy," says Shewmaker. "And then, of course, you have to give your garage to it, even if you assemble the wings separately. That means you have to park your car out in 'the street. My wife gave me the dickens about that."

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