WILD BLUE: PILOTS TAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRPLANES TO THE SKY

A pilot took to the sky Friday in Larry Schwepker's amateur-built airplane.

Pedals and a stick, along with a few basic instruments, were what kept most experimental aircraft aloft.

Jerry Clubb, Ferguson, Omer Hodges and Willard Phillips watched from the shade of a hangar as another flight took off from Painton's grass airstrip.

Every day, if the weather isn't too bad, you'll probably find at least one of the 50 Experimental Aircraft Association members down at the Painton airfield. They might be tinkering with one of their homemade aircraft or working on building a new one. If you get there late enough in the day, say an hour before sunset, you'd probably see an assortment of odd-shaped and wildly colored airplanes skittering down the grass runway -- wing tips skimming past the row of corn that lines the strip.

Most likely, you'll find five or six EAA Chapter 453 members sitting in the limited shade cast by the wing of one of their aircraft, smoking their pipes and drinking their sodas and talking about -- what else? -- flying.

"I call it re-creation, instead of recreation," EAA member John Ferguson said. "This is just like a second home. Most of us don't play golf or bowl or do anything else besides fly."

They come from as far away as Charleston, Sikeston and Fruitland. They're old, young, ex-military, ex-rebel. A lot of them have their own planes and some of them don't. But they all have one thing in common; they'll strap themselves into anything to get into the air.

An experimental aircraft is a category of airplane that encompasses a wide range of shapes, sizes, speeds and abilities. Amateur-built airplanes dominate the Painton airfield and range from those resembling World War I biplane fighters to hang gliders strapped to a wheel barrow.

But EAA is more than just buzzing corn fields. The members are taking it upon themselves to promote aviation to children. The international EAA has a goal of "flying" a million children. Painton's chapter has already taken up more than 300 area youngsters.

The king of this realm, the EAA's answer to Chuck Yeager, is Al Painton, who has been flying most of his adult life and has built four airplanes. One of the first planes Painton built, a French designed Tempete stunt plane, he still flies. He constructed it from a plan back in the 1950s for around $5,500. It has a wood frame with specially treated fabric stretched over the wings and fuselage. It's smaller than his biplane and faster with a top speed of around 135 miles an hour.

Painton also built a Canadian-designed biplane painted with a World War II Italian air force desert camouflage. Both planes use automobile engines and run off high-octane gasoline. It took Painton seven years to build his first plane, but since his retirement he's been able to devote more time to his project and has built his last two planes in less than a year each; but they have been more expensive costing as much as $15,000 a piece.

Amateur-built experimental aircraft, for the most part, look and sound like professional built single-engine planes, except they're a little smaller, seating only one person comfortably. Many times, depending on how much money the owner is willing to spend, the planes can be quite beautiful with mahogany instrument panels and brightly colored exteriors. Their controls are usually simple, a stick and pedals for rudder and flap control.

Ultralight airplanes are even simpler in design, but can be a challenge to operate. Brian Williams of Cape Girardeau flies his Easy Riser ultralight out of Painton. Easy Risers were popular in the 1970s, Williams said, but went out of fashion in the mid-80s. Basically, it is a hang-glider wing, in a biplane style, fashioned around a seat that is held in place by an aluminum-tube frame. Strapped to the back of this frame is a Kawasaki 35-horsepower snowmobile engine with a three-bladed wooden propeller.

Painted a glossy white, with silver tubing and black seat, Williams' ultralight is striking in appearance but is deceptively difficult to fly. The seat slides along its frame and to rise the pilot has to push the seat to the rear of the aircraft. To go down Williams' has to pull the seat forward. Turning is a matter of pushing a small joy stick to the left or right, which moves the flaps accordingly. And while flying along at 35-40 mph, with nothing to shield the wind, the experience can be a little intimidating at first.

"It'll scare you to death," Williams said. "I've talked to a lot of professional pilots who wouldn't be able to fly this thing. It's unconventional, you have to teach yourself how to fly it."

Williams did that by taking the ultralight up a few feet off the ground and keeping it there until he felt comfortable. "Then you just go for it," he said.

That "go-for-it" attitude is something else the members of Chapter 453 share, but none of them is reckless when it comes to flying.

"We try to warn people that it is unwise for them to buy an airplane and then try to fly it from reading the manual," Ferguson, one of EAA's most experienced pilots, said. "I fly people all the time. And when they are able to maintain a certain calmness, a certain amount of confidence, then I feel comfortable in letting them fly.

"You have to make sure your confidence does not exceed your experience and wisdom and you can do pretty much anything."