Jim takes pride in the fact that he’s constructing a plans-built airplane as compared to one built from a kit. “The plans-built planes are more difficult to construct, because with the kit you get a lot of ready-made parts,” says Jim. “Most people who are building home-built airplanes these days tend to build them out of composite materials, which are in a fact, plastic.” In stark contrast, Jim gestures toward the meticulously constructed wood frame of his plane. “I'm a bit of a woodworker – as you can see by my shop – and I have always been a hobbyist of some sort. That's why I decided to build it out of wood.”

But Jim isn’t using just any typical wood that can be purchased at the local hardware store. The skeletal structure of the plane is built from Sitka Spruce, which he says is the wood equivalent of aluminum because it’s lightweight, but high-strength. It’s a rare, expensive wood which originated from the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. For the skin covering, he is using Birch plywood, which mostly comes from Finland.

Jim is confident that the construction will be complete in the year 2020. The next challenge will be transporting it to the airport for the test flights. After giving his plane the proper roll-out party, he’ll carefully roll the plane onto a car carrier. “My loose plan is to haul it to the airport around three or four o'clock on Sunday morning with a police escort,” says Jim. At that time of the morning, there should be minimal traffic to disrupt the plane’s journey to the airfield. It will be quite a spectacle for anyone who happens to be driving that route on that particular morning.