Ace_Plumber
Well-Known Member
I first saw the Hummel Bird in Kitplanes magazine in 1987. I thought it was pretty cool (I still do) and since I did hundreds of U Control models as a boy (I couldn't afford RC) and I always wanted to build and fly my own real airplane. I started to check it out a little closer. Cheap and easy to build and fly,1.5 gph fuel burn small, easy to store. Sounded pretty good to me so I purchased plans. At that time you had to buy planes from Gary Watson for his wind wagon and another separate set of conversion planes from Morry Hummel to make a Hummel Bird. It was fortunate that Bill Spring Came along as working from two sets of bad planes was pretty impossible. Bill wanted to build a H.B. as well,he took pictures of Morry's plane at Oshkosh and asked lots of questions on the phone.The best part is, being an electrical engineer, Bill drew a usable set of planes for the H.B. So I bought a set of planes from him as well as his construction video.The latter proved invaluable. The video contained a lot of metal working techniques that I needed to learn as I had never worked with aluminum sheet before although I had done a little sheet metal work when I was employed by a mechanical contractor doing hospital construction. So I was ready to build my dream machine at last. So in July of 1990 I bought most of the metal needed for the project. I looked at all that shiny metal for eight more months before I got the nerve to start cutting it up.It cost about $1000 at the time and was a large purchase for me! The only place I had to work on the project was in my carport,That was fine until the weather turned cold, and work stopped. I rented a shop for my business and moved the project to the shop. That was short lived as work was slow and I had to move out of the shop and back to my carport. That stopped work again until I could regroup. My Wife wanted me to add a bathroom onto the house so as a condition of that I was able to turn the carport into a garage. So after a new bathroom, new roof, paint inside & out all new electrical and a new garage (climate controlled so I could work year round) I was set to resume work. That is the short version of my H.B. project I received my airworthiness certificate on November 21,2007 
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