It's been hopeless for longer than I'd care to admit.

When I was seven or so years old, I was leafing through one of my dad's copies of Popular Mechanics that were always lying around the house. I was attracted to the many pictures of airplanes and I was just beginning to understand that normal people were actually building these in their homes.  On this occasion I came across the following article and... well... I guess it was only a mater of time.

Ironically, the two projects that make up the bulk of my aircraft were both underway by the time I discovered this article.

Click on the thumbnails below to open the pages of this article in new windows

Note: According to Economic History Services.  The $3500 mentioned in the article as the amount required to launch a Coot out of your garage and into the sky would work out to anywhere from about $13K to something like $35K in 2005 dollars (depending on which economic metrics you use to calculate the comparison).  I, for one, am partial to the "GDP deflator"... that one comes in at $13,078.89. 

So far, I haven't been able to find a calculator that will tell me what 1500 hours of building time in 1972 works out to in today's clock.