Joe and Ruthann Robinson are building an airplane in their
garage.
Hollister – Joe and Ruthann Robinson are building an airplane in their garage.
Not model airplanes, or one built out of Legos. The Robinsons are assembling a fully-equipped, fully-functioning and capable of carrying passengers and flying through the airplane right inside the garage of their Hollister home.
“It will be a while before it’s finished,” said Ruthann Robinson, 70, referring to the Zenith Zodiac aircraft she is helping her husband build in stages. “Joe’s hoping for a year, but two years seems more reasonable to me. A friend of ours just finished building a plane, and I asked him how long it took. He said he worked on it almost every day, from about 9:30am to 4pm, for about two years.”
Building kits can come in various styles and stages, Robinson said. The plane she is building with her husband, for example, has many of the sections already assembled.
“Obviously, you don’t put the wings on the body in the garage,” she said. “We’ll build the wings first, and then we’ll do the fuselage. We’ll build in stages, and then we’ll assemble it at the airport.”
Flying has been a passion for Joe, 75, since he was a 16-year-old teenager growing up in rural Ohio. He would hang out at the local airport, washing planes and doing general handiwork around the hangars. Pilots would give him unofficial lessons, and back then, planes did not have instrument panels like they do today, Robinson said.
“I think that was a good way for him to learn,” his wife said. “I think it’s good to know how to fly a plane without using instruments, because that way you know what to do if something goes wrong. You never know when you might have to fly by the seat of your pants.”
Joe kept flying, but was busy raising a family, and flying lessons are costly. After his children were grown, Joe finally took actual flying courses, finished ground school, passed the official Federal Aviation Association exam and earned his pilot’s license when he was 45. A few years later, now a widower, Joe met Ruthann, and the couple was married in 1981. Joe introduced his new bride to the joys of flying, and Ruthann decided to try and earn her own pilot’s license.
“It’s nothing I had ever even thought of doing before,” she said. “Some people I know think I’m not a very good driver, and I don’t like to turn left without a light. I had a teacher ask me why I thought I could fly a plane when I don’t like to drive, and I said, ‘well, in the sky, you don’t usually see another plane nearby, so it’s a little easier to turn left.'”
Before moving to Hollister eight years ago, Ruthann completed her ground school training at Cabrillo College, and passed her FAA exam. Then living in Scotts Valley, the couple decided they weren’t ready to spend the money needed for official in-the-air lessons with a trained instructor that would earn Ruthann her pilot’s license.
“Flying can be very costly,” she said. “And the flying part is kind of scary to me. For other people, ground school is scary, but not for me. During the actual test, you have to stall the plane in the air so you can show that you know what to do if it happens for real. That scares me.”
In the meantime, Ruthann and Joe enjoy flying with friends and building their own airplane, hoping one day soon their plane will be fit for for the blue yonder.
“It takes a while, and we’ll have to have the plane checked out by someone from the FAA,” she said. “It’s a lot of work. Joe calls me Rosie; from the Rosie the Riveter posters hung in factories during World War II to encourage women at work. So I guess I’ll do the riveting.”
Laurie Castaneda writes Local Stories every Wednesday for the Hollister Free Lance.
