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Berkut 360 kit for sale


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First of all, best wishes on your new endeavor.

 

I don't intend to discourage you from the "American Dream". I just want to present my experience.

 

I had flown my Long EZ for over 500 hours and life was good. I thought that life could be better and I started my own business in 2000 (first flight of my Long was in June, 1995).

 

Years later, I got my Long flying again (June 2008) and that was after selling the business that I had started to make room for my "American Dream" at the expensive of flying my Long EZ.

 

When I started the business, there was no discouraging me, just like none could discourage me from building the Long in the begining of the construction in 1984.

 

My point is that, I built my Long EZ and got it flying, took time off from it to pursue my own business, and my business required so much from me that I didn't get my Long back in the air and enjoy it while I was running my own business.

 

I sold my business in the last of 2006 and got my Long in the air again in June, 2008. I started racking up the hours (enjoying my Long) and then started racing in October, 2008. I am now the Sprint Class leader in the Sport Air Racing League - http://www.sportairrace.org/id258.html

 

My whole point of this response, other than bragging, is that even though it seems like the right thing to do to start your own business, sometimes it is a bad move and you would enjoy life more if you don't start your own business.

 

Dave

Dave Adams

Long EZ N83DT

Race 83

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Dave Thanks I appreciate the encouragement/warning. I'm still young :D and Dale has his Long in our shop. Unfortunately it's a little to late for me to back out now, for an airplane. Who knows maybe if I'm successful I can afford a Berkut that's allready built and flying. Tony

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The descendants of the Mongols of central Asia must have an intense feeling of pleasure knowing they'd progressed to the point they could command the mighty golden eagle to do their wolf hunting for them. Their name for this ultimate bird of prey is Berkut.

 

'Wonder how they'd feel seeing their stately weapon swoop to the Earth backwards? Its tail feathers in front?

 

Those of us belonging to the tribe EAA wouldn't bat an eye at seeing a Berkut swoop down to the numbers with its traditional beak and tail pointing the wrong direction. That's how far we've progressed.

 

We now accept the unusual as the usual, courtesy of the sultan of weird, Burt Rutan. We have come so far since the original VariEze, 4EZ, blew us away at Oshkosh '77 with its absolutely Buck Rogers, this-can't-really-be-happening appearance, that nothing surprises us any longer. That is why an aircraft such as Dave Ronnenberg's wonderfully modern rendition of the feathered, Mongol wolf hunter is accepted as being only logical. It is part of a progression, a natural evolvement of the unique breed of eagles that look as if they fly backwards and are only a few steps removed from an picnic cooler in structural complexity.

 

Ronnenberg and his company, Experimental Aviation (3025 Airport Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90405, 310-391-8645 Editor's note: this company no longer is in business), have taken the basic concept of the VariEze/LongEZ and carried it to the next level. A long-time builder of LongEZs (eight to his credit), Ronnenberg didn't start out to have a career building backwards flying machines. He had been a serious model builder when, in his mid-twenties the death of his brother set him on a new life-path.

 

"That was the turning point of my life," he remembers, "I needed something to help me keep my sanity, so I decided to design and build an airplane of my own."

 

At that time he hadn't even been in a light airplane, but he felt he had to build something that flew.

 

"I don't know why I thought I could do it, but I had no reason to believe that I couldn't do it either. As a child I had always felt if I had the right tools and the right materials I could build anything."

 

He describes that first airplane as a cross between a Mustang and a Spitfire built of thin plywood and foam. Four years later he found the airplane had had its desired effect.

 

"At that point I realized I had survived the emotional upheaval of my brother's death and at the same time realized I had a natural feeling for fiberglass and composites. I looked at that airplane and knew I had done my kindergarten work at one end of it and my college thesis at the other.

 

"It had been a combination education and psychological survival course. it had served its purpose, so I took a saw to most of it and the only time it flew was as the parts left my hand and spun a few times before they hit the dirt at the Los Angeles dump."

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