PORT TOWNSEND — Steve Craig learned to build his first airplane from nose to tail before he earned his pilot’s license.
Craig, a 45-year-old Bothell fire station lieutenant who works a 48-hour shift, then commutes home to Port Townsend and his airplane hangar for rest and aviation, said there’s a reason he took that unusual flight path.
“I decided to build the plane first so I could later focus on learning to fly,” Craig said, standing by his shiny silver Van’s Aircraft, an experimental plane, at Jefferson County International Airport near Port Townsend.
Help from Air Force pilot
Retired Air Force pilot Peter Albrecht, who has built three experimental planes and is working on a fourth at his shop on the outskirts of Port Townsend, lent Craig a hand in building his RV-7, which has a computerized cockpit.
While Craig said it was his late father and pilot John Craig who originally gave him the flying bug as a child, he credits Albrecht with sparking his interest in building his own plane.
“Peter was building an RV-6, and I found that it was really intriguing,” said Craig, a 1982 Port Townsend High School graduate.
Building the plane was a painstakingly careful process that took two years of intensive work and included driving 13,000 flush rivets into the aluminum skin of the plane’s smooth body.
The two-seat plane weighs a little more than 1,100 pounds.
Designed by Richard VanGrunsven — founder of Van’s Aircraft Inc., in Aurora, Ore. — the plan was built in four modules, Craig said, starting with the tail section, then the wings and fuselage. The kit comes with a 180 horsepower 4-cylinder engine.
Upon completion, Albrecht test flew the plane for the then-unlicensed Craig.
After Albrecht completed the high-performance planes flight testing March 26, Craig jumped into learning to fly April 20, with Fred Harris as his instructor.
“I did most of the ground school on my own, and Fred did the flying and class instruction,” he said.
After 60 hours of flying time, both solo and with an instructor, Craig was ready.
He took the intensive five-hour written, oral and flight examination, earning his pilot’s license Oct. 22.
Part of his test required him to cut the engine and glide from 5,000 to 500 feet.
That part of the flight exam, he recalls, was “intimidating.”
Several experimental planes
Talking about the aviation community at the airport between Port Townsend and Port Hadlock, Craig said, “One of the greatest parts of this is the education and the people involved, many who built their own aircrafts.”
Albrecht said at least five people at the airport are flying planes they built, and two are now under construction.
Such home-built planes cost about a third of the $250,000 that they might cost fully assembled, Albrecht said, so they are affordable, as well as having the latest in navigational technology.
They are both affordable and safe, Albrecht stressed.
In Washington state, he said, experimental pilots who are intimate with all pieces of the aircraft after they build them are allowed to routinely inspect them to meet Federal Aviation Administration safety regulations.
Craig said travel by planes is fast and quick. He can fly to the Shelton airport in 25 minutes from Port Townsend.
He has landed at Paine Field in Everett, Boeing Field in Seattle, the Olympia airport and has flow from Port Townsend over the Cascade Mountains to Yakima, back along the Columbia River to Portland and back.
Recently, he said he flew his wife, Crystal, to Orcas Island and back.
“This is a beautiful area for flying,” he said.
When the Hood Canal Bridge closed for its east-half replacement project in May and June, Albrecht flew Craig from Jefferson County to the Renton airport as part of his commute to Bothell.
Next, Craig said he is working on a design to paint his plane, which he said could add another 30 pounds to its weight.
The beauty of experimental aircraft, he said, is “that people can create exactly what they want.”
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
