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... see ADS-B traffic, monitor CHTs for optimal mixture leaning, set the autopilot or call up many other features. Putting Garmin’s retrofit-friendly G3X Touch and associated avionics through their paces elicits a severe case of ‘panel envy’

- Colin Goodwin

Another duff rivet, another failure to measure thrice and cut once. Building your own aeroplane is fraught with mistakes and challenges to one’s self-confidence. I’ve said to many people that building my RV-7 was 65 per cent technical skill and 35 per cent psychological. That might even be underselling the mind-over-matter part of the job. To get over the frustration of a day of making mistakes, I often used to put the tools away, pour myself a pint of London Pride and sit down with my copy of Chasing The Morning Sun, the enthralling account by Manuel Queiroz of him kicking cancer into touch, rebuilding an RV-6, and then flying that aircraft around the world in 39 days.

I don’t think I’m brave enough to fly an aeroplane from Tarawa to Honolulu non-stop. It would require enormous confidence in the Lycoming engine, and a more momentous leap of faith in my own workmanship for me to sit in an aircraft for sixteen hours as the lonely Pacific Ocean passed under my wings. That’s what Manuel did, while sitting surrounded by 450 litres of avgas. And then he did almost the same length of journey again flying from Hawaii to San Francisco.

I will never make such a flight in my RV, not least because Mrs Goodwin would veto it. And not least because I have yet to paint the spare bedroom ceiling−a job which has been on the to-do list for longer than HS2, Crossrail and the third runway combined. This, however, has never stopped Manuel’s wonderful book from being a tome to inspire. I read it several times during the build of Dumbo and several times since.