How one man built a custom airplane in his backyard to fly his family around the world

How one man built a custom airplane in his backyard to fly his family around the world - From Blueprints to Backyard Hangar: The Engineering Behind the Custom Build

Honestly, I've always thought building a plane in a backyard sounded like a hobby that never actually ends, but the engineering here is way more serious than just bolting parts together in a shed. Since there wasn't any room at the local airfields, he literally had to build his own hangar first just to have a space for the assembly to happen. When you're planning to haul your family across oceans, you don't just "build" a plane; you obsess over the airframe's skeleton, which in this case means using 6061-T6 aluminum alloy to handle those heavy +4g to -2g structural loads. It’s about making sure the thing doesn't just fly, but stays together when the air gets rough. I looked into the

How one man built a custom airplane in his backyard to fly his family around the world - Navigating the Legal Skies: Certification and Safety Testing for Home-Built Aircraft

I used to think the hardest part of building a plane was the actual riveting, but honestly, the paperwork and safety hurdles are what keep most people grounded. To even get an Experimental Amateur-Built certificate, you have to prove you did at least 51% of the work yourself, which basically means keeping a massive, obsessive log of every bolt you turned. Think thousands of timestamped photos just to show the FAA you weren't just hiring a pro to do the heavy lifting for you. Once the thing is together, you don't just take the kids for a spin; we’re talking a mandatory Phase I flight test period where you’re stuck in a specific box of sky for up to 40 hours. You're up there alone, sweating over stall speeds and engine cooling

How one man built a custom airplane in his backyard to fly his family around the world - Designing for the Long Haul: Custom Features for Global Family Travel

I’ve spent plenty of time looking at standard GA planes, but trying to fly a family across oceans in one is usually just a recipe for total exhaustion. To make this actually work, he had to rethink the fuel system from scratch, installing custom extended-range wing tanks that hold 140 gallons and push the flight time past ten hours. But it’s not just about staying in the air; it’s about where you’re flying, so he added a pulse-demand oxygen system to let everyone cruise comfortably at 25,000 feet. At that height, you’re getting way better fuel economy and dodging the nasty weather down low that usually makes kids feel pretty miserable. I’m honestly impressed by the noise control, because small cockpits are usually

How one man built a custom airplane in his backyard to fly his family around the world - The Ultimate Maiden Voyage: Lessons Learned While Circumnavigating the Globe

You think you’re ready for the world once the plane is finally airworthy, but crossing oceans in something you built in your backyard is a whole different brand of stress. I mean, just look at the fuel situation in places like Southeast Asia; you can't just pull up to a pump and expect 100LL avgas to be waiting for you. He actually had to ship 55-gallon drums to remote strips months in advance, and then spend hours in the humidity chemically testing every barrel for moisture or gunk. Then there’s the weirdness of magnetic variation when you’re flying through high-latitude regions, where the needle swings 30 degrees and you’re constantly recalibrating against true north. It’s a real wake-up call when you try taking off from a high-altitude spot like Addis Ababa. Between the elevation and the 35-degree heat, the density altitude eats nearly 40 percent of your climb performance—honestly, that’s where you really start hoping your power-to-weight math was spot on. Out over the South Pacific, you’re basically in a total communication "dead zone" unless you’ve got a solid Iridium satellite link for your telemetry. I was surprised to see how much the cosmic radiation adds up at 25,000 feet, where the family was soaking up about 30 times more than they would at sea level. To keep everyone from losing their minds, they had to be religious about blue-light filters and strictly timed melatonin just to handle the physiological hit of crossing dozens of time zones. On the long Atlantic legs, running the engine lean-of-peak saved about 15 percent on fuel, which is the only reason they didn't have a heart attack when hitting those massive headwinds. The air gets twitchy when you move from sea to land, too, with rapid pressure changes causing airspeed to jump 10 knots in a heartbeat. He ended up flying with a constant hand on the throttle just to stay in that narrow safety envelope, but honestly, seeing the world from that custom cockpit makes every logistical nightmare feel like a fair trade.