Santa Ana Man Hopes to Fly Pint-Size Plane Being Built in Garage

“My parents always told me if I wanted something bad enough I should save my money,” said Kevin L. King, 25, of Santa Ana, so when he saved enough ($12,000), he bought his dream, a World War II gull-winged Corsair F46, the aircraft featured in the television show “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”

But there is a difference. It’s only half size and he and his buddies are building it in friend David Candeloro’s home garage in Santa Ana.

The garage is not only the rallying point for all the volunteer aircraft builders, but it has become a neighborhood attraction and stopping point for curious motorists astonished to see a war plane in a driveway.

“I don’t know how they find us,” said King, a City of Orange public works employee, “but people who once flew these planes in the war come by just to take a look. I got called by a man who built a half-size Zero (Japanese plane) and he wants to have a flying party to get some pictures of the two planes that once fought each other.”

King is actually the second owner of the built-from-a-kit plane and that pleases Glenn Minklein, 43, of Anaheim, who had spent four years building it before becoming ill.

“Actually, I needed the money, and I knew Kevin would do a good job finishing it,” he said.

King’s interest in the plane came after Minklein started to build it, “and from that time I’ve always wanted a Corsair.”

A licensed pilot and member of the Experimental Aircraft Assn., a group of home airplane builders, King said he plans to get the Corsair airborne sometime in February “and all of those who have stopped by want to watch the first flight,” which he expects to be near the Corona airport, where he plans to store the plane. He said the plane will hold enough fuel to fly 300 miles.

“I just want to fly and I just want to show the plane,” said King, who expects to carry out that vow by entering air shows. He said only two half-size Corsairs are known to exist besides his, “and they’re on the East Coast.”

One visitor asked how he plans to bail out if he gets into trouble, considering he has to stuff his six-feet-tall body into a small cockpit.

“I’ll just turn the plane upside down and drop out,” he said. Wearing a parachute, of course.

The following reasons are why Mecca Carpenter, a health educator at Saint Joseph Hospital in Orange, believes people should join her three-session exercise walking class:

You don’t need any equipment except shoes.

Body muscles and bones are designed for walking.

It’s not as exhausting as running or jogging.

You can do it all your life.

The class only costs $12.

You can walk and talk at the same time.

Steve Johnston, 42, of Irvine, is God.

Well, at least he’s the voice of God, the role he assumes when transcribing the Bible on cassette tapes for his Newport Beach company. He has recorded four versions of the Bible and each took nine months to complete. Johnston says 200,000 of the Bibles on tape have been sold.

What kind of voice did he give Jesus? “I pictured his voice as someone who demanded attention,” he said, and “I kind of gave it a loving tone. And I said it with love.”

The deep-voiced Johnston said his depictions are not all straight reading. “We dramatize passages where we can and we use music and sound effects.” He hires professional actors as well as members of the South Coast Repertory for voices of other characters.

“There’s a new market out there for books on cassette tapes,” he said, “especially for busy people, those who are commuting, housewives and even for gift giving.”

Besides the Bibles, Johnston has embarked on another ambitious project. He has been commissioned to read the history of the United States from 25,000 BC to the present, a project that will take six months, reading three hours a day, and will encompass 56 cassettes, each 90 minutes long.

The information will come from the book “Our Land, Our Time.”

“Actually, when we put a book on tape it’s basically a radio program in book form,” said Johnston.

Except, of course, the Bible.

Acknowledgments--Shirley Stephenson of Westminster was presented the Southwestern Oral History Assn.’s James V. Mink award for her “outstanding contributions” to the group’s program, which records the lifelong history of people on the grass-roots level.