Project takes flight

WASILLA — After 10 years of tinkering, Jim Woodley finally took off.

On Sunday, Woodley and wife Patty Livingston left for Seattle in their homemade Glasair 2 they began building in 1999.

“It’s been a total labor of love,” Woodley said in an interview on Friday. “I’ve been working on this thing almost daily for 10 years. I’ve had three major surgeries and a heart stent during that time, and I have still worked whenever I can.”

Woodley began flying on January 12, 1968. He was an air traffic controller in the Air Force, and the transition to pilot came naturally being surrounded by aviation daily.

After borrowing planes for 30 years, the time came for Woodley to get his own.

“I’ve always wanted a plane. My wife has a Cessna 180, and I started looking around for a project,” Woodley said.

He found the Glasair 2, and on Jan. 15, 1999. He assembled the elevators, the flap-like features on the tail that point the nose up or down.

“I had no knowledge what so ever about building an airplane,” Woodley said. “The knowledge you have to gain going along is the big thing. It comes with two very thick manuals. You read the manual, and you hope that what you’re doing is right.”

After years of piecing together the fuselage, he installed the engine, avionics and instruments. His wife took over on the inside, hand-stitching the leather and laying the carpet for the interior.

Asked how much his project cost, Woodley admits he has close to $100,000 invested in the plane. However, this is much cheaper than the comparable planes made by a company called Mooney. Even a new Cessna 172 is about $150,000, and, he said, they are not nearly as fast as his plane.

With the aerodynamics of the body sitting on top of the wing, his Glasair 2 cruises at about 220 miles per hour, Woodley said. Even with the two seats occupied and accompanying baggage, the plane will easily travel 1,000 miles on a single tank of fuel.

That should make the trip to Seattle a breeze, he said. The flight will take seven or eight hours depending on the wind and weather and with one stop for gas. They will either head down the coast, stopping in Ketchikan, or over Canada with a stop in Whitehorse to clear customs.

By no means is this the first flight of Woodley’s Glasair 2, as the Federal Aviation Administration requires a plane to have 40 hours of flight time before taking off for Seattle. He has already put well over 50 hours on his plane, but this will be the farthest and longest he has gone yet.

But with the big-screen GPS and autopilot, Woodley feels good about the maiden flight to the Lower 48.

“I’m not worried about it at all,” he said. “Things seem to be working pretty well, so were just going to go with it.”

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.