Small Planes Take the Low Road to Fair

Dawn had barely slipped across the Antelope Valley on Saturday when the distant humming began.

A small knot of people, standing on the edge of a field of Joshua trees in Lancaster, squinted at the sky, tracking the source of the sound.

It was not easy. The first light of the sun, still low over the valley, was so brilliant it had turned the metal backside of a nearby stop sign orange.

But the spectators soon spotted seven homemade planes heading their way. One after another, the experimental planes gingerly landed on Challenger Way near Avenue H and taxied to a stop in front of a trailer park.

The planes had taken off just a few minutes earlier from General William J. Fox Airfield about seven miles away. The planes’ destination was the Antelope Valley Fair, but it was impossible to land there so the pilots had arranged with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to touch down on Challenger and taxi the last few blocks.

The planes will be on display at the fair through Labor Day, and the pilots, members of the Antelope Valley chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Assn., an international group, will be on hand. Dick Rutan, who co-piloted the experimental Voyager aircraft on a 1986 record-breaking flight around the world, will sign autographs at the fair at noon today.

Some among the group of three dozen curiosity seekers snapped pictures as the small planes slowed and zigzagged to a stop on the cracked asphalt road.

“I sure was surprised when I saw them land on the street,” said Fe Morante, a Lancaster resident. “I wish we’d have more things like this happening here.”

The landings were flawless, but one sheriff’s deputy was spooked when a skinny white plane taxied near his squad car.

“That was pretty close,” shouted another deputy. “You might want to move your car.”

The deputies escorted the pilots several blocks--past a supermarket, video store and a 7-Eleven--and caught the attention of a few more early risers.

“They are cute. They look like little toy planes coming down the street,” said Vera High, who was out on her daily walk.

The planes are classified as experimental because they are homemade and are not certificated by the Federal Aviation Administration. Many of the pilots sent away for kits and spent years assembling them in their garages. Most of the planes on display have room for just one or two people, and weigh and cost less than many used cars, the pilots said.

“Building an airplane is probably the ultimate do-it-yourself project,” said Roger Knight, who spent 5 1/2 years and $5,000 constructing his single-seater. From the front, Knight’s plane, painted bright yellow and orange, looks like a cross between a grasshopper and ET, the extraterrestrial.

The pilots, whose ranks include an optometrist, telephone repairman, engineer and a flight test pilot, are displaying their planes at the fair in hopes of encouraging others to take up the hobby.

“It’s very much like a contagious disease that has no cure,” joked Jack Huffman, a retired electronics engineer with the Federal Aviation Administration. Not content with one plane, he is building two more.

“It’s something anyone can do, you just have to want to,” insisted Jerry Coates, the head of the Antelope Valley chapter.

His colleagues adopted the same attitude when they talked as if landing their planes on a street was as easy as walking a dog. They just shrugged it off.

Marlys St. Clair, who has lived with her husband’s addiction to flying for more than 40 years, looked amused by the pilots’ nonchalance. It’s all part of the “macho pilot image,” she confided.

The truth, said St. Clair, standing next to her husband’s sleek foam-and-fiberglass plane, is that “they are excited about showing their babies off.”

Jean Rice, another pilot’s wife, does more than just tolerate her husband’s obsession with flying. She loves to ride in the back seat along with her husband’s flying mascot, a stuffed Alf doll that wears goggles and a leather aviator cap.

Rice said she had gone through two husbands “who wouldn’t get off their duffs to do anything” before she met her aviation tinkerer. During the four years it took to assemble the plane, she lived with the engine in her den and other airplane parts scattered throughout the house.

“You learn to poke little flowers in it to make it into a conversation piece,” Rice said.