Sitting Up Front Again

As many regular readers know, I’ve misspent my years in journalism, the majority in the automotive press. But that was back when there was an automotive press, which is to say several oil change intervals ago.

Airplanes have always been my first love—well, aside from all those cloud-billowing, flame-belching rockets I scrawled on any bit of available paper in my kindergarten years. That was during the early space age, the unmanned satellite and then Mercury heyday when rockets were white and carried a black diagonal stripe about two-thirds up their bodies. They also blew up a lot at first, which added to the excitement, I thought.

Enter Cars

The dichotomy arose as I neared high school. That was the first time the price of entry to aviation made me duck behind my wallet. There were no aviators or airplanes in my household or anyone else I knew, but there was a car in the driveway. Sure it belonged to my dad, but feeling adventurous I’d lift the hood and take the wing nut off the air filter and peer down the four barrel and wonder what it all did. Then put the lid back on, somehow without dropping the wing nut down the carburetor. The wing nut on the air filter on the tractor had already vibrated loose out in the field so I knew what sort of trouble that was.

An old Schwinn led to me pestering the local airport and even eventually getting a private certificate, but by then I was also thinking race cars looked pretty cool. Illustrating the ignorance of youth, they even seemed more affordable, which ought to tell anyone what a tyro I really was. For sure the race cars were more approachable, as the guys at the track seemed more willing to exploit my nascent mechanical skills than the guys at the airport, most of whom were pleased to have me keep my hands off their airplane.

And so it was cars for too many decades. A demonstrated capacity for mechanically not always getting it right the first time, but coupled with a peculiar talent for talking and writing about it—apparently without fatigue as some would tell me—steered me toward auto magazines. Before too long I was editor in chief of a narrowly themed but vibrant little ditty called Super Ford. I had been writing a column in the back of that magazine for some time—we called it Back Seat Driver—and so when I became editor I moved from the back of the magazine to the front where the editor’s column always holds court.

History, I can now confirm, truly does repeat itself as I was writing the Rear Cockpit column herein, but with the recent departure of previous Editor in Chief Marc Cook there came a roaring sound at the front of the good ship KITPLANES, as if the vent wing window was open during a dive. Someone had to go forward and sit in the pilot’s seat, and having the fewest and least convincing of excuses of those present I was volunteered for the job. Which means, once again, I’ve moved from the back to the front of the magazine. Deja zoom all over again.

No Yank and Bank

The first thing to say is the dive and wing vent window analogy is just overheated storytelling as Marc Cook left the magazine in fine shape. In fact, he left it cruising straight and level with the AP on, and no drinks were spilled back in the cabin. Certainly there is no intention of fundamentally changing the magazine. Special interest publications such as KITPLANES enjoy a close relationship with their readers, to the point where the readers often take a sort of emotional ownership of the title. Change is thus immediately suspect as readers happy with the title obviously don’t want to see it morphed into some marketing manager’s idea of The Great New Thing. As such, our focus remains on Experimental/Amateur-Built aircraft: how to select, build, and fly such machines along with their ancillary equipment. Our emphasis is on the technical knowledge of building and owning these intensely individual and useful aircraft, along with conveying the experience of flying them.

One huge advantage I retain from previous editors is the staff at this title. I’m not going to name names as where to stop would be the problem, but be assured the core editorial people associated with KITPLANES remain in place and delivering what can only be described as a mixture of skills, experience, and dedication far above the norm. Something besides mere odds has brought these people to KITPLANES, and that something is the recognition this magazine represents the last outlet focused on communicating the essence of hands-on, personal aviation. We’re smitten with building and flying our own airplanes and by the torque of my wing-attach hardware I hope it shows.

Chances are excellent you feel the same way, and as has been said many times before, KITPLANES doesn’t have a staff in the traditional sense. It doesn’t even have a physical plant, as the core staff simply works from their homes across the time zones. The fewer than a handful of people who do the daily grind of coordinating, copy editing, and artfully organizing the words and pictures into a presentable magazine are working with words and pictures sent from a large cross section of builders and aviators just like you. They are the ones who had an idea and took the time to send it to editorial@kitplanes.com. Our staff, in other words, is you. And I invite you to send in your ideas, stories, complaints, and kudos to help form the only tangible thing in this entire process: this magazine.

Earlier I announced no big changes planned for KITPLANES and that’s true, but I must say we’re aware costs have risen alarmingly in what was already a financially intensive hobby. And while in the 17 years I’ve been associated with this title I’ve been one of the first to excitedly report on some of the most high-dollar, multi-cylinder, turbocharged hardware, we are also taking a fresh look at lower-cost ways of aviating. Let us know how we do. In the meantime, it’s an honor to be handed the controls of one of the rarest rides in aviation.