Did you ever find yourself as a kid dreaming of tearing about the skies in your own WW2-vintage fighter plane? Of course you did. Every normal male child on the planet dreamt of doing that. However, owning your own restored fighter is the very pinnacle of exotic rich-guy luxury. But kitplanes may make it possible for the less than rich to get into flying.

Before Kitplanes

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, surplus military aircraft were actually quite plentiful. Uncle Sam tried selling these things to the public for about three years, but nobody was really interested. America had grown weary of war, and those with means had little interest in acquiring the implements of combat.

Some enterprising investors eventually realized that you could drain the gas for resale and scrap the planes and get more than what the government was asking for them. In short order most of these classic warbirds were gone. Nowadays, no more than a handful in airworthy condition remain.

Dollars And Sense

A P51 Mustang cost the government $50,985 in 1945. That’s about $787,000 in today’s money. Of the 15,000 or so that were made only about 150 remain flyable today. Most of those planes are in museums. When a decent Mustang comes onto the market, it rarely lasts long and typically sells for between $2 and $3 million nowadays.

In recent years restoring and maintaining these old vintage planes has become big business. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, Eastern Europe, and Russia opened up for exploration and exploitation. Many tanks and combat aircraft were identified, recovered, and relocated to the U.S. for restoration.

Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, has a passion for vintage military aircraft. His collection resides in the Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum in Everett, Washington, today. Allen recovered a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-5 in 1990 from Russia and had it meticulously restored. This plane is currently the only Fw 190 in the world flying with its original BMW 801 radial engine.

While each of these planes recovered from the muck is a priceless artifact of one of the most extraordinary periods in human history, what’s a regular guy to do if he wants to taste a little of that sweetness himself?

If you’re not Paul Allen, chances are you won’t be retrieving Nazi fighter planes from Russian swamps and restoring them to flyable condition. However, for us normal guys there yet remains a way to get there from here, at least sort of. Specifically, kitplanes.

Aviation Particulars

Flying is undeniably expensive. However, many Americans enjoy a fair amount of discretionary cash. We have, in this very column, explored some of the most extraordinary vehicles. These all-terrain trucks and off-road racers could do some simply spectacular things, but they were reliably spendy.

In the world of exotic high-performance automobiles, it’s not hard to drop half a million dollars on a supercar or custom survival truck with all the bells and whistles. For a fraction of that, you can get into a very nice airplane.

Plaintiff’s attorneys make fun stuff like airplanes unduly expensive. Most new-made, factory-built general aviation aircraft are cost-prohibitive. By contrast, older airplanes remain quite reasonable. Unlike automobiles, the stringent maintenance requirements for an operational airplane keep these old planes flying safely for generations.

In addition to the purchase price, the new airplane owner needs to budget for an annual inspection and the inevitable incidentals. Additionally, avgas isn’t cheap. Everything you might need to replace or service will be more expensive on an airplane than on a car. However, you can still get into a very nice airplane at a modest cost. To find decent performance on a real-world budget, you should consider homebuilt kitplanes.

We Americans do cherish our freedom. In most states, you can build a gun from scratch for personal use, and you need neither register nor serialize it. Likewise, as the United States was the birthplace of powered flight, it is strikingly easy to get all the makings of a proper homebuilt airplane (kitplane) delivered straight to your door on the back of a big truck.

Learning to Fly

The Army taught me to fly, so getting into the game was not as arduous as it could have been. If you start from scratch and rent your training aircraft, you’ll drop $10,000, earning your private pilot’s license. Owning your own airplane obviously makes this more convenient and potentially cheaper as well.

When I was getting back into flying after nearly 20 years out of the cockpit, I bought a cheap beater Piper Tomahawk and flew it for a year or so to get my air sense back. The Tomahawk is a factory-built trainer plane that dates back to the late 1970s.

The Tomahawk is docile and forgiving, making it the perfect primary training aircraft. After a while, however, I was ready for something a little spunkier.

Van’s Kitplane

My current plane is a Van’s Aircraft RV-6A. The RV family is the most popular homebuilt aircraft kitplane design in the world. There are literally thousands of these spunky little planes flying.

The RV-6A is markedly faster than my old Tomahawk, and the added performance makes it much more fun. In general, faster airplanes are more demanding to fly, but RV homebuilts remain nonetheless quite predictable and forgiving.

My RV-6A seats two side-by-side and cruises at about 160 knots. That’s 184 miles per hour. My feisty little airplane cuts a car trip by two-thirds. A three-hour drive is a one-hour flight. Flying will never be cheaper than driving, but it will always be faster and more fun. I live in north central Mississippi. I can have an early breakfast at home and then lunch in Chicago.

Building such a machine yourself is indeed not for the faint of heart. Most such projects take literally years to complete. However, the end result is pride of ownership and recreational opportunities like none other.

My used RV-6A cost about what a decent sportscar or nicely appointed SUV might. It will carry two normal-sized people and their luggage and look cool doing it. What it is really good for, however, is just playing around.

Think of this energetic little homebuilt aircraft like a three-dimensional motorcycle. The machine is eminently maneuverable. Aileron rolls don’t take a lot of talent. As I tell new fliers, a ride in my plane can be a Rolls Royce or a roller coaster. That snazzy little machine is capable of doing all sorts of things I’m not willing to do myself.

Before You Take Off

It is indeed a daunting expenditure to go from a pedestrian to a pilot. Add in maintenance costs and $5-per-gallon avgas and the numbers can become scary. I have a day job as well as this writing side gig, and that is what feeds my particular addiction. Thanks for that, by the way.

If you’ve got this itch, nothing else will really scratch it. Zipping out to the airfield to turn a little avgas into noise is a simply splendid way to kill a pretty Saturday afternoon. In weak moments you can imagine yourself chasing the Luftwaffe across the skies of Europe. There’s really nothing else in the world quite like entering the world of kitplanes.

For more information, please visit VansAircraft.com.

Van’s Aircraft RV-6A Specs

Seats: Two
Length: 20 feet, 2 inches
Wingspan: 23 feet
Gross Weight: 1,600 pounds
Engine: Lycoming O-360
Max Speed: 180 knots (210 mph)
Stall Speed: 43 knots (49 mph)

This article originally appeared in the March-April 2022 issue of Tactical Life. Get your copy today at OutdoorGroupStore.com.