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 I recently posted this story to the Canard Forum. You can read the entire thread here. Basically I let the forum decide on whether or not I should begin building or not. In reality I was ready to build but needed a good kick in the pants.
Well I'm currently going through my bi-monthly guilt trip for NOT starting the Cozy. Please bear with me while I rant a little.
I would have never have believed it, but I'm now celebrating four years of NOT building. My loving wife bought me the plans on our first anniversary. Just two weeks ago we celebrated our fifth. Nearly everyday over the past few years I've dreamed, thought, planned, prayed, and hoped of building. I've been to Osh & RR & even visited countless other canard builders while travelling on business trips.
Like many of you, I'm an aviation nut. At times, I wish I would have gotten the bug a little earlier in life; I may have chosen a different career. Not that I'm complaining, things could really be exciting over the next couple years.
So why haven't I started? Life mostly…
In the early days it was money, plain & simple. Like many newlyweds, we didn't have a pot to pee in. Amy was finishing her final year in school and I had one final class to graduate. While finishing that class, I worked full time for our family business.
At this time was when I really became seriously interested in aviation. I've always been interested in airplanes, but in high school and collage I was into photography in a big way. I operated a small wedding & portrait business on the side for several years. Anyways when I met my future wife, I found out her dad was pilot. Although he hasn't been current in years, I found it fascinating. Ultimately I started taking flying lessons when I was awarded one of Cessna’s Learn To Fly scholarship for $1,000. After starting my PPL, I had to put it on hold for various reasons, but finally completed it last year after a two year delay.
So over the next four years life has been a roller coaster. The family business was closed after losing our competitive advantage when our primarily supplier moved in. I went into sales for a year, but was finally offered a position with the company I’m with now. Almost exactly one year ago, Amy & I accepted another position within the company that will hopefully take my career to another level. I accepted the Field Service Engineers position in Melbourne, Australia. Not that they needed someone from the states, they just couldn’t find someone locally with the right combination of experience. We are here on a two year contract, with the option to stay longer.
So here we are living in Australia and traveling the country as much as we can afford. Generally my job does allow me to have my evenings and weekends free, so there is time to build. I really would love to start building while I here, but again it’s not a clear cut decision. Up until now we had been paying our mortgage on our empty house in the states and rent on a place here. I felt it simply wasn’t wise to take on another expense.
The house finally sold a few weeks ago which frees up the monthly cash flow. Amy & I have been living very conservatively over the last year or two and finally feel like we’ve met some goals. Even before collecting the proceeds from our house, we have a several months worth of income in the savings and have no CC debt. So with the house sold, I’m feeling guilty for not starting.
At this point we are hoping to stay for only about another year. If I were to start now, the plan would be to bring in only enough stuff to work on what can be completed. It seems like chapter 4-9 (minus the actual gear) would be a comfortable order. Without Epoxy that would roughly be $2,000.
Here are some of the pluses and minus for starting.
Some of the Pluses
-I finally get to build! (in the words of the great Nat Puffer, …nuff said…)
-I can use my free time in the evening more constructively. No more killing time with little projects just to keep busy. Believe it or not on my metal lathe I just completed a baseball bat out of a rotor from one of our motors. And I really don’t even like Baseball.
-No more delaying. I’ve owned the plans for four years. If I wait another year or so it’s just that much longer. Guys have built and flown their planes in less time.
Minus
- Less money to travel around Australia (We’ probably only going to stay here for another year or so and want to take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity to travel)
- Alot of extra money. Spruce cannot ship MGS internationally and I hear it is $250 a gallon to buy locally. Also I have no clue what shipping charges would be for the Spruce shipment, but let’s pick a number and say $500-$1,000. Also anything I buy from the states, I’ll have to pay Australia GST (gouge & screw tax). It’s 10% of the invoice, so there another few hundred dollars.
- I’ll have to build a table locally that I probably won’t ship home. Lumber seams to be more expense here. I don’t really know, but I’d guess I’ll have to flush another couple hundred down the dunny (Australian for toilet). One upside, Spodman may get a free or cheap table out of it. Downside is I’ll need another table when we move back to the states.
- When we move home the company will pay to have the tub shipped, but I’m concerned about damage. If the tub is complete (Bottom & sides glassed), I’m sure it’ll ship fine if I build a custom box for it. The reason I sold the previous tub was it did not have the bottom and the outside was not glassed. It seemed somewhat fragile and I did not want to take the chance of it delaminating.
- I’ll have to take some money out of the savings. It not a huge deal, but after being broke and then saving so many nickels & dimes over the last couple of years it’s hard to let them go. You can ask my wife, I hate to spend money on anything (except hand tools ). Also we would like to continuing saving to have a significant down payment on another home in the next couple years.
So I guesstimate that it’ll cost $3,500 - $4,500 to get the basic tub started. I figure it’ll cost $1,000 - $2,000 extra for things like shipping, GST, a table that will have to stay here, inflated prices for epoxy, etc.
So what do you all say? Should I start building now? Or should I wait till we move home and spend the money traveling around OZ?
After a week, almost everyone encouraged me to start.
So it looks like I'm finally going to start.
The logistics will take a couple weeks to figure out, but we are beginning the process.
This week with the help of Spodman and Hennie, I’ve called a couple places locally to price MGS. I’m hoping to receive pricing this week.
This next week I’ll try to determine what is cheaper to buy locally and what to ship from Spruce. I hope to contact a few of the local builders and ask for their assistance.
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