Greetings All,
Stewart Buckingham's recent e-mail introducing himself has encouraged me
to "out" myself and stop "lurking" on this mail list. (I've only been
lurking for about a week now, but that's beside the point.)
My name is John Reddy. I live in Tucson, Arizona, USA with my lovely
and supportive wife Anne Zones. We have ordered a Europa XS Monowheel
which should be here sometime in April. I'm one of the incredibly lucky
ones. My wife not only thinks owning an airplane will be neat, she even
wants to help. I fully intend to follow Steve Genotte's advice and keep
her, because I'll never get this lucky again.
While I've been interested in building an kit airplane ever since
reading about the BD5 in Popular Mechanics when I was in my teens, I've
only recently taken up aviation as a hobby. I started seriously looking
at building a few years back after seeing "Plane Crazy" on PBS. (Yes,
the show featuring the crazy trying to design and build a plane in 30
days.) I started taking flying lessons in February of 1999 and got my
private ticket April 1, 2000. I first saw the Europa at the Copperstate
Fly-in, October of 1999 and fell in love with it. I took a test ride at
Copperstate 2000 and liked it even better from the inside. Anne and I
then attended an Alexander Sportair class taught by Kim Prout last
November to prove to ourselves that we really could do this. At this
class we got the chance to meet Tony Krzyzewski and see first hand what
Europa building can do to you. Couldn't have scared us too bad because
shortly after that we wrote a check and mailed it to Lakeland.
In my short time monitoring this list I've been very impressed by the
quality of the postings. I feel I know several of you already from your
web sites. Tony K's, Steve Genotte's and Martin Tuck's sites played a
big part in my decision to build a Europa. I look forward to getting to
know the rest of you.
John Reddy
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