Once the cross tubes are placed in proper position, I mark the centerline of each tube and drop a plumb to see if the top longerons are off to one side. If they are off then they can be held in place until the down tubes are tacked into position. With the plumb, I also mark where the down tubes will go so that they are exactly vertical.

Here some more tubes are in place. It's important to constantly check for straight and true. You can easily tweak the frame into position right now but with every tacked tube it becomes a little more rigid.

Here are a few airplanes I've built over the years using some of the same techniques that I'm using on the Breezy. One of my very best friends in the world, Bill Nolan, taught me practically everything  I know about building airplanes. I first met him at 14 years old at the airport and he was working on an old Aeronca Champ wing. He immediately told me to "get over here and help me on this wing". He had the patience of Job and was like a Dad to me. He was killed about 7 years ago in his RV-4. I still miss him every day.

The first plane pictured below is a Pitts S1C that I started when I was about 19 years old. I finished it in less than 1 year but Bill and I would stay up until 2-3am on most nights working on it. Later I built some modified Ultimate wings for it with four full span ailerons and the slave strut moved inside the I-strut. I took out all of the internal brace wires, covered it with 45 degree mahogany plywood and left off a third set of flying wires that Gordon Price had designed in there. This thing had a roll rate of about 450 degrees per second!

This was not my first building experience as I had a KR-2 project when I was 15 years old and built a Smith Miniplane (rebuilt is more accurate) while in High School  with my brother who was also in High School (which we later traded for a Texas Taildragger C-150). The pictures are kinda crappy because I just took a picture of the pictures hanging on the wall of my shop.

This plane is a Highly modified Stephens Akro called a Laser. It was based on Leo Loundenslager's famous Laser that he developed except I took it a step further and put a big 260hp Lycoming in it. I also expanded the aileron a couple of bays for faster roll rate. This is a very high performance, unlimited aerobatic airplane. It flew very well though, of course, nothing flies as well as a Pitts!

This is another highly modified Pitts Special that I built for a physician to do airshow work. It had a 4 cylinder Lycoming that was modified to pump out about 250hp. The ailerons were my own design utilizing an offset hinge, 3/4 length and all polished aluminum. I got the idea for the hinges back in the late 80's, early 90's from Ray Williams (he built a retractable gear Pitts!), who in turn had developed them with Kermit Weeks. I tried to take the best from their work and incorporate it into this plane and some others I built. It had a great "feel" to it and a very fast roll rate. Later Curtis Pitts used similar type ailerons on his Super Stinker Pitts (or maybe Kermit got the idea from Curtis, not sure). I also built the spring aluminum gear. I had to build a custom hydraulic bender and set up the milling machine to shape and mill all of the brake line grooves etc. I built and sold these for a while.

This is the last Pitts I owned, an S2B. It was a store bought and carried a 110K+ price tag but like all Pitts, flew beautifully. I may buy another 2-holer someday but I really enjoy the performance of a lighter airplane. Every time someone flew with me all I could think about was how much performance I was giving away!!

Back to Breezy's!

Here all of the tubes are tacked in and the jig is removed.

Here is a picture from the front. I'm pretty happy so far with how it's coming along. I just wish I could spend more time on it.

For those who wonder why I don't get more accomplished, here is what it's like being a resident physician. This month I'm covering our Hospital service at NEA Baptist Hospital. I usually get up at 5am and round on all my patients plus I have to admit all the new ones during the day. At noon I go to our noon conference which is usually really interesting. Someone will present a topic such as an interesting case and go through the ins and outs of it. After that we have our "report" which is where all of the AHEC doctors get together (there's about 25 of us) and present all of our patients. I present all of the ones at NEA and the others present the St. Bernard Hospital patients. There's also our Obstetric patients (we deliver something like 5-600 babies per year) and the pediatric patients. This usually takes another hour or so. After that I go back to the hospital and check on all the patients and discharge the ones that are ready to go home. There are always labs to check on, X-rays to look at and other specialist to confer with. On Wednesday I have my afternoon clinics where I see my clinic patients and on Thursday afternoon I go to the Church Health clinic which is a volunteer clinic. These clinics are tough because if I get called by the ER to admit someone I have to drive 10 minutes to the other hospital and write up the admission paperwork (the whole process takes close to an hour) yet I still have to see all of my patients. If all goes well and I don't get called at 10 minutes 'til 5 then I usually get home by 5:30 or so. Of course, once a week I'm on call and that usually involves little to no sleep for the work day, all night and the following day so that can wear you out pretty good! Still I love it and am really glad I'm here at this residency.