Mark Schindler, NC email - mtschindler_at_yahoo.com

I've been asking all of you to submit your profile, including a few words about yourself and your airplane. Now as I've sat down and started to think about my profile I realized that I've no idea what to say. I was born in Krakow - Poland (see pics)- that should explain a lot, and yes I've heard that joke and enjoyed it. I'm a NERD by profession and spend a lot of time in front of a computer, both at work and at home. I've always been very active and with encouragment and blessing from my father pursued a lot of interests: skiing, sailing, windsurfing, scuba, kayaking, waterskiing, horse back riding - dressage, motorcycles, hiking, hunting, sporting clays and target shooting, reloading, making things out of leather or steel (like knives), fly fishing and a recent interest in wine making. I'm surprised that I've time to work. My flying began in 1990 in sunny Florida. I'm a Private Pilot with Tailwheel endorsement and enough under the hood IFR hours to take the test. My love affair with Avid Flyer started after I moved to a small town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I purchased my Avid MK-IV with Rotax 582 and a Warp Drive Prop. I had flown it for about 65 hours before I decided to change to Jabiru 2200 - 80HP 4 stroke horizontally opposed engine made in Australia. At the same time I decided to uprgade the panel. I wanted a more standard layout with a Turn Coordinator just in case I got myself in a limited visibility situation. This is what I ended up with . I was very happy with the updgrade. Sensenich 58" propeller gave me good climb and a very nice cruise with top speed of 106 mph. Jabiru engine is a jewel, very efficient and quiet - and I love the 4 stroke reliability. I've also upgraded the landing gear to aluminum Grove gear which I hoped was going to reduce the drag and improve the plane's performance another notch. Randy Grove made my gear a bit narrower for the max Gross Weight of 1150 lbs which I feel was adequate for my Avid but that allowed me to save 7 lbs over the standard gear. Total conversion added less than 20 lbs to my empty weight and that included, engine, new longer cowl from Jabiru, landing gear, extended tailwheel, turn coordinator, Electronic Information System, MicroAir Comm, electric elevator trim,Intercomm, and a GPS. I've also added a Narco Transponder with Encoder which I'm going to replace with the unit from MicroAir as soon as I find $1000 I don't know what to do with. Conversion took me about three months and turned out fine. I've selected a Sensenich propeller for my Avid. I considered others but based on conversations I had with different mfg's Sensenich made the most sense. They had years of experience and were very accomodating. Don at Sensenich assured me that they will make a prop which will allow my engine to perform at the optimal setting at climb and produce max RPM in level flight - they have come through and I ended up with a beautiful, efficient and a quiet prop. . I had flown my new setup for another 60 hours when I suffered a bent fuselage in a hard landing. I took my fuselage to Florida where a friend of mine repaired the damage. In the meantime Steve W. offered a "fat" Avid fuselage which added 16" to the length, 4" to the width at the seat and 8"-10" in the panel. I've decided to make that upgrade. I've reasoned : I already have more money in my Avid than I ever could recover so it made perfect sense to make it the best it could be and don't worry about the bucks 4 inches in the seat would make it a lot more comfortable with two people in it 8-10 inches in the panel would allow pilot and copilot to separate their knees - added comfort again since I didn't build the original plane, the upgrade would allow me to inspect the whole project and know exactly what I had. I've sold my original fuselage, sent a deposit to Steve W. and decided to recover the wings while I was waiting. What I'm going to have is a new airplane, with all possible upgrades to the original Avid. As of January 26th I'm waiting for the fuselage, starting to work on the wings and waiting for the weather to get better. I've mentioned in the beginning that I'm a skier and we are taking advantage of good skiing in the North Carolina mountains, hence my Avid project is not progressing as fast as I would like it to, but it will switch to high gear when I get the new fuselage.