Dan Reeves and his airplane are getting close to the wild blue yonder.
Reeves got his pilot's license a year ago, and Wednesday he hauled the plane he has been building in his Lower Allen Township basement for the past nine years through a hole in his wall and into the light of day.
“Success,” he said, raising his arms, after he and a group of friends pulled the plane up a ramp, onto the sidewalk, then onto a trailer for its trip to Capital City Airport, where he will put on the final touches.
“It’s a huge relief” to get it safely out of the house, he said. “Sometimes I thought I’d never finish this thing, but I had so much encouragement from friends and family.”
The two-seater Van’s RV-7A airplane with a cruising speed of 175 mph came in four kits which he bought when he had the money, starting with the tail, then the wings, then the fuselage, then the finishing kit.
He works out of his home for IBM, so he could head to his basement whenever he had some free time. He figures he worked on it eight to ten hours a week, for a total of 2,200 hours.
“It keeps me out of my wife’s hair,” he said. “Whenever I would annoy her, she’d tell me, “Go work on your plane.’ ”
Friends, neighbors and his six children sometimes pitched in, adding their signatures to the plane’s body.
His daughter Heather, 22, grew up with a dad who was building a plane in the basement. She helped with some of the riveting, and her smaller hands could get into close spaces easier than her dad could.
“When I told my friends my dad was building an airplane, they thought, a little model. But no, a full-size airplane,” she said. “People would look at you funny. They thought he was crazy, but fun. It was a good family thing.”
Reeves’ brother Matt flew down from Rochester, N.Y., for the occasion Wednesday in an airplane he finished building from a kit three years ago.
“I thought it would take me six months. It took me 13 years,” he said. He said he encouraged his older brother to give it a try.
“I told him just do it,” he said. “If you start now, before you know it you’ll have a whole plane.”
Matt Reeves said having a plane makes Rochester and Harrisburg seem like neighbors. It only took him an hour to fly down a route that would take six hours by car.
Reeves figured it cost him $40,000 to $45,000 to build the plane, plus the $5,000 it cost to excavate down to his foundation, shore up the basement walls, jack up the house and knock a hole in the wall large enough to safely get the plane out. A similar new plane could cost a couple hundred thousand dollars, he said.
Aaron Marshall, a Realtor with Prudential who has a background in construction, coordinated what Reeves referred to as “The Big Dig” Wednesday, hiring the engineer, Gleim Excavating and D.B. Masonry to help get the plane out.
Dave Bilunas, owner of DB Masonry, said he is used to repairing basement walls for cracks, but this was his most unusual assignment in 25 years in business.
Wednesday’s events drew a crowd of onlookers, including fellow members of the Greater Harrisburg chapter of the Experimental Airplane Association and neighbor Cheryl Ramos, who stopped by to see what all the fuss was about after she saw the colorful “Airplane Removal Wednesday” banner hanging off the porch.
“I’m surprised he’d think of doing that,” she said of Reeves’ project.
The contractors will start rebuilding the wall today, although Matt jokingly told his brother to leave the hole open “in case he wants to build a helicopter.”
It will be a couple of months until Reeves can fly his plane. He has to attach the wings and complete some wiring, then get trained on a similar plane. The FAA has to inspect it and issue a certificate of air worthiness.
For the first 40 hours of flying, he will be limited to a 50-mile radius around the airport and cannot take any passengers. According to his brother Matt, “if the wings are still on after 40 hours, they figure it’s safe.”
Heather is looking forward to her first flight, and is thinking about going for her pilot’s license.
Reeves said he knows what to do with his spare time once his nine-year project is finished.
“I’ll fly,” he said.