For me, it all started in Oshkosh.
I’d never been particularly interested in aviation at all. As far as I was concerned, flight was more or less restricted to the giant silver Greyhounds in the sky…and they were about as exciting as mud. Sure, there were smaller planes that could constantly be heard buzzing like horseflies above our house in rural Illinois, but I never really gave them much thought. They were like trees, rocks, cars or birds. They just were. I regarded them in the same manner as I did anthills. They were cool to watch for a while, but they got pretty boring in relatively short order.
When I first got reconnected with Michael, his untamed passion for all things flying immediately stuck out to me. He’d methodically spent the majority of his adolescence and young adulthood delving deeper into aviation, one step at a time. Listening to him speak about general aviation was a fascinating insight into his world. As much as he would deny it, he’s physically incapable of talking about flying stuff without a boyish enthusiasm creeping into his voice. I found that level of excitement about his chosen field to be a bit contagious.
When he invited me up to Oshkosh with him, I’ll admit that I found the prospect to be a bit daunting. He wanted me to camp in an airport in Wisconsin and look at planes? For a full week? I immediately came up with about sixteen million other vacation destinations I’d rather go to for our first getaway together, but his excitement was palpable. If nothing else, I was curious to see what all the hulabaloo was about. Besides, I like camping, it presented interesting subjects to practice my photography on, and most importantly…I got to spend a full week with my favorite engineer.
The first thing that struck me about Airventure was the sheer amount of people that were crammed into the area. There were thousands of tents, campers, trailers and trucks in every direction that you looked. We got our camp set up in relatively short order, and then Michael escorted me to the coolest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
Thousands upon thousands of planes…of every make, model, specification and odd-ball variety. High wings, low wings, homebuilt, warbirds, ultralights and more, as far as the eye could see. I almost didn’t know where to look.
I can’t say that I remember at exactly what moment the Q2 caught my eye, but I remember stumbling upon several of them parked in a neat line somewhere around day four. They were weird looking. No other plane I’d seen thus far had wheels on the bottom of their wings. Who does that?
The next day, I had the distinct pleasure of watching one get marshalled in to join its kin. They looked even stranger in motion than they did standing still. For some reason, I found myself inexorably drawn to the little weirdo planes. I spent the next few days learning as much about them as I could. Suddenly I found myself actually interested in the differences in performance between the RevMaster 74hp engines and the O200 continentals.
Oh God…what was I becoming?
At the time, I had no way of knowing that we’d end up bringing one home three years later. But, as with most tales, very few things go right the first time you try to do something. The story of how we found our new pet project is no different.
Really, it all started with an email and an impromptu trip to Atlanta.
Q+2 