I actually worked on a homebuilt project for a couple years but had to sell it when I no longer had the time and money to complete the plane, (a Sonerai I Formula V racer). It broke my heart when I sold that project.

The urge is getting very strong over the past few years. I actually convinced my wife to sell a house that was paid for to buy a new house better suited to my addiction. The new house has a large workshop in the basement with 6 foot wide doors to help get big stuff in and out. Am I sick or what?

There are over 600 different homebuilt designs out there, either as kits or as plans-built designs. Of those, there are several planes that are really catching my interest. One is the Pioneer 300, a cute little two seater with pretty good performance on relatively modest horsepower. Being able to fly reasonably fast on only 4.5 GPH (about $8 an hour for fuel costs) is pretty attractive. There's also the RV-7A, RV-8A, or RV-9A designs. They offer higher performance but at a higher hourly operations cost. As if those weren't enough choices, there's also the Velocity SUV, a completely different design. All of these planes could be built for roughly the same cost and each offers different strengths and weaknesses. Decisions, decisions....

One of those homebuilt autopilots would be nice on long flights.