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Several years back, at a fly-in at the Frasca airport in Urbana, Illinois, I got interested in amateur-built aircraft. Over the years, I've toyed with the idea of building an aircraft of my own.
For a while now, I'd pretty much decided that it's really not the thing to do. Generally speaking, it's far better off to build for the sake of building; if you want to just fly, it's better to buy something. But then the cost and availability comes into play. As much as I like my New Beetle, it means less cash available over the next couple of years while we pay off the other car and have long-term work done on the house.
So I'm back toying with the idea of building something. Not as a way to get flying sooner, but as a way to get closer to having my own airplane using the trade-off of time instead of money.
Interestingly enough, the sort of design I'm thinking of building has changed over the years. The first designs I thought about were composite, Styrofoam covered with epoxy-impregnated fiberglass. They're very strong and tend to build fast designs. But you spend your life sanding the surfaces to get them nice.
I've looked at Aluminum airplanes more recently. Riveting is noisy, and it tends to be complicated and take lots of time.
I'm finding myself looking at the oldest designs lately, fabric-covered wood airplanes. I just spent the evening looking at the Pietenpol Aircamper. It's a design originally from the 1920s; the first one was powered by a Ford model-A engine. It's a single-high-wing with two seats in the fuselage in tandem. The Corvair engine is a reasonable powerplant for this airplane.
The construction techniques are simple and the aircraft itself is simple enough that perhaps it would be a good starting project. The problem that I'm running up against is that I really can't afford to buy a flying airplane at the moment. I'm a member of a flying club, which is great (and it's really cheap to fly there) but it's almost 2 hours to drive there, so flying only happens on weekends. I really won't be able to maintain enough hours per year to make flying more than just a hobby. I won't ever really be comfortable or good at it. To do that I would need something locally that I could fly at least a couple of times a week.
No decisions yet, of course. Part of this is just having been to Oshkosh and been re-infused with enthusiasm for flying. While there, I took the 2-hour fabric-covering seminar on the field. That was interesting, so I think I'll take the weekend two-full-day one later on in the fall as it becomes available.