Rutan homebuilts were never "kit" planes...

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

                                                                                                                   Lao Tzu, “Tao Te Ching”

What that saying above means is even the longest and most difficult endeavors or goals start with one small, initial action. Taking the first step is often the hardest part, but it’s essential to begin.

Rutan Aircraft Flying Experience has taken its first step into it’s eleventh year of existence. In the beginning of this “journey of a thousand miles” we called ourselves the “Rutan Aircraft Flying Musuem”. Too often though we were asked “Where is your museum?”. The simple answer was we didn’t have one. Museums are buildings full of stuff on display and buildings like that are expensive . We found ourselves in a quandary. We did want to collect Rutan artifacts to create a Rutan museum, but had no place to display them for the public to see. We need a hangar for our fleet of Rutan airplanes and thus our hangar has become our “museum”.

A crowded hangar is a great place to display airplanes, but not a great place to display artifacts. Once we built our airconditioned workshop and office in our Houston Ellington hangar,  it occurred to us that we do have a place to put things on walls, thus this has become the "first step" towards our museum.

Placard next to Wicks display

Today we hung an item up we’ve had for a while and are happy to finally display. To the uninitiated it wouldn't seem significant. To us it tells a great story that's symbolic of the main difference between a “kit” plane and a ‘plans built” homebuilt aircraft. When you buy a "kit" plane a big truck shows up with a crate. Inside the crate is an almost completed airplane. When a builder of a Rutan Vareize ordered their “kit” a big box of raw materials showed up. Almost every piece of a plans built airplane gets made by the builder. THAT is the difference. A good friend and RAFE supporter Tom Wright didn’t have a lot of money but wanted to build a LongEZ badly. He said “I built my LongEZ one hundred dollars at a time, every piece I built by hand. I couldn’t afford Brock pre-made metal parts so I cut out my own with a hacksaw." Sometimes, when I feel like poking a “kit” plane builder when they say they “built” an airplane I’ll asked them, “What part did you build?” 😊

We’d like to thank Scott Wick of Wicks Aircraft and Pilot Supplies for this unique display of a tool they used in their warehouse to help assemble the items included in the “Varieze kit”.

One day, when we have the funding, we hope to have a real RAFE Museum with lots of historical items on display besides all our airplanes. For now, if you’re in Houston give us a call and visit our hangar museum, just know if you hang around long enough, we'll put a tool in your hand. With 14 flying airpanes, there's always lots to work on!

Sincerely,

Ryszard Zadow

President, RAFE

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