Joanne Heckmann.

You can read the article about Joannes Avid in June 2004 issue of Sport Aviation. This is an e-mail I got from Joanne.

Hi Mark,
You asked how the article came about - I submitted my completion photo and write-up to Sport Aviation and it was published in the April 2003 issue. Then I started getting emails from EAA, they noticed the line about building the wings in the living room of my second floor apartment, and thought there might be a story there. They wanted to do the story at OSH, possibly take photos, but last year there were too many thunderstorms in the way. Amy actually called me from OSH thinking I might have gotten in. So instead we talked later via phone for about 1-1/2 hours. I sent lots of photos, negatives and digital.

They asked again about Sun'n'Fun, but this spring the weather was horrendous. So they did the story based on the phone interview. The photo on the first page was taken by my friend Tex Mantell the day of the FAA inspection. At that point, the Avid was still stored in a garage, thus the tailwheel for when the wings were folded. I had no idea they would do seven pages! what a shock.

A month before the article came out, the Avid was invited to Rochester Wings 2004, for static display. This is an annual FAA event, now two days, with exhibits and WINGS seminars. Astronaut Col. Pam Melroy flew here in her T-38 from Houston (I worked with her Dad, Dave, on a couple of Wings of Eagles airshows here locally years ago) and I met her briefly, she and her husband are considering building an RV. That evening Pam gave an excellent talk at the banquet in the corporate hangar. My little Avid was in the corner of the hangar, with balloons to set it off, quite a few people took a closer look. One TV station covered the event on the 11 o'clock news - the Avid was on TV for maybe 3 seconds.

Best of all, a friend and Kitfox builder here, Floyd Johnson, invited us to Williamson's fly-in breakfast, and we ate free! They've been doing it for over 40 years, so it's a great event. Lots of people saw the Avid and liked it.

We've been going to fly-in breakfasts maybe every other weekend now, a lot of fun. My boyfriend, Dan Baier, flies with me on the weekends.He's a CFII. He really enjoys flying the Avid - after landing it in a nearly direct crosswind, 18 gusting to 26, he says it's easier to land in crosswinds than his Cherokee. I'm not quite that skilled yet! but I'm working on it. Dan calls my G-meter a Land-O-Meter and we compete to see who can land with the best reading.

The Avid has 60 hours on it now. I've taken it into all the paved airstrips within about an hour of my home field, LeRoy (5G0). The 582 is running great - I gap the plugs at .016 and am religious about warming the engine before taking off.

jheckmann_at_rochestersystems.com