When you start building an airplane in your garage, things change around the house. You have to run outside through the rain to get to your car. You answer the phone less because you're "real busy." And you find yourself out in the garage at midnight, maybe with a cold beer, just taking it all in and thinking about the exciting days ahead.

As the finished components start piling up, you become busy with many other details involved with getting in the air. Details like where you will fly, where you will keep the plane, how you will get it to the field, will you get your flying lesson tomorrow...

Even with all that's going on, there are days when there is practically nothing to do. You just can't make any more progress until something else happens.
Enter the "doodah" project.
Doodah is about going back and making something better, more right.

My first-time mating of the trike, wings and tail happened in the front yard. A year later I was doing this alone in 18 minutes, but the first time it took well over 2 hours.
I got to meet most of the neighbors down the street that day. The ones that didn't stop to talk cruised by at around 7 mph.

At the time, most ultralight pilots were hauling their planes around in trailers. Hangaring them was almost unheard of so we were always on the lookout for places to fly. It became clear, at least for the time being, that my little flyin' machine was going to live at home.
So... it was "gotta-gotta getta trailer."

The Doc was an incredibly handy guy to have as a new friend. He was always dreamin' stuff up and then building "prototypes" of it. And, he loved to weld. Phase I was bare minimum - to get the trailer just capable of hauling the plane.

The plane was now finished, but only after the huge commotion of doing the engine break-in... in the street, with the trike tied to the bumper of the truck.
Although the trailer did have several significant shortcomings (doodah...), it looked like the whole rig was going to work out great.

My little MX made her maiden flight and I made my first solo flight from a luxurious turf farm along the banks of the Potomac River.
I differentiate the two because it was Sport Flight Bob who first flew her - his standard dealer practice.

Only a bozo would take off in an ultralight without logging appropriate training time in a two-seat trainer (in my case, six hours). The ultralight flight envelope is unique in aviation and must be learned.

As winter approached, the number of flyable days dwindled. My attention returned to the trailer and all the improvements it needed.
There was no master plan. I just started sawing, drilling, screwing and painting . I was doodah-ing.

Everything up to this point was, in a way, preparation. It was the tent, canopy and coolers that crystallized the style in which we would fly.
Just about everything went along for entire weekends in the air -

The whole time I was flying I never saw another airplane that I thought was going to be my next airplane.
I had gotten it right the first time.

Someone coined the term "airgasm" to describe all the fun we were having. It stuck... and we all ran with it.
An evening cruise above the Potomac River at altitudes around four feet was airgasm material. So was buzzing the picnic table and blowing it clean with prop wash.

Several pilots started keeping their planes at Leo's house, where there was a small but ultralight worthy field. I got lucky and he allowed me in, too.
It didn't last long, though. A short two weeks later everyone was asked to leave because of noise complaints from neighbors.

The Doc had friends in a place called Kilmarnock, 120 miles from DC where the Rappahanock River meets the bay. Interest was high so we all hit the road for Labor Day Weekend.
Four vehicles, six pilots, three MXs in trailers and everyone's disco camp gear made the trip.

Enter Ed Whitman. In the Spring of '85,
the buzz was that someone had flown from a great place down in Faquier County, VA, and that the owner was real friendly to pilots.

It was what everyone had been waiting for... 120 acres of wide open space, a 2400' grass strip and even a sky that seemed size extra-large.
The word spread fast and Ed said "yeah, sure..." to all the pilots.

Mike, the Doc, and Woody... they were my flying pals, my party buddies.
Mike, aka Dead Stick, was my hangar partner. He loved sleeping in his truck.
The Doc, of trailer fame, had his own particular brand of disco camping and was a funzone all by himself.

With Ed Whitman still saying "yeah, sure..." and insisting that everyone have lots of fun, Mike and I went 50/50 on a hangar in a kit. We assembled it over the days while waiting out the midday rowdies.
We thought of painting "Frederick's of Hollywood" across the doors but never got around to it.

... so I just kept buildin' stuff.
I include this photo only as help to some MX pilot out there who might be looking for this kind of cool idea. The channels that the main gear rest on turn into drop-down ramps... just pick up the tail and push.

The air at daybreak is pristine and one of the benefits of camping is that you're always there for it.
If you're ready to fly just as the heavy ground fog begins to lift, you're treated to a very special sky... a sky still thick with the sweet, dense night air... one that gets bigger and bigger with each passing moment.

I was never getting in the air anymore without my big, motorized camera around my neck - flying with one hand, camera in the other, one eye through the viewfinder.

But the Doc, he was doing video.
Today's camcorders weren't around then so an elegant mounting had to be designed for the bulky equipment.
That job was right up Doc's alley.

The higher you fly in an ultralight the less motion there is. At anything above 4,000 feet it is often hard to detect any forward progress at all. So this is not where the fun is.
The most fun is on the deck, where the whole thing is called "contour" flying.

Contour flying was just made for those Kodak moments. As a photographer, all you had to do was walk out into the field and trust your friends to not run you down while trying to get in close.

Woody had completed his Ultrastar and was flying it over in Maryland. He flew it down to our field one summer and kept it there for about a month.
He roared into town, as they say.

There's only one proper way to get above the clouds in an ultralight.
You need a way around them on the way up and a way around them on the way down. You also must pay closer attention while you're up there because conditions change quickly, especially for low, early clouds.

Woody and his hot ride were great entertainment at cloud parties.
He would zoom past, crank a sharp wing-over, dive and disappear.
Again, and again, and again.

I was one of the lucky few to have the front row seat to his dances in the evening sky.
More than anyone else I knew, Woody combined raw flying skill and aggressive grace to take it to the limit and make it look easy.

The satisfaction from flying ultralights comes from more than just flying.
It's your own dream and you pursue it.
You buy it. You build it. It is you who solves every problem along the way. It is you who is the sole judge of the airworthiness of both yourself and your airplane.

Flying my beautiful little MX came to be second nature to me.
This happened as I realized that the nervous excitement of early flights had become augmented with knowledge and experience.

It wasn't until near the end of my flying days that I took this "one for the ages" photograph of my own MX in flight.
Mike had long been telling me I could borrow his plane, so I finally did - for the one and only time the wife and I went for an evening cruise together. The photograph just makes it all the more memorable.

"So why did you stop?", you ask.
Well, I like short stories and that is a kind of long one. Let me just say that life details caused it to slip away.
Truthfully, I didn't think about it that much until this year, when I began looking again at the sway of the trees and started down the road of sharing this story with you.