For the love of planes

For the love of planes

Posted 2 years ago

?Mom says while I was in a baby carriage I used to get excited whenever planes went overhead.?

Ivan Myslawchuck has always been interested in planes. At the age of six he was already building models. By 17 he was flying real aircraft and at age 21 he had his pilot?s license. Myslawchuck has never given up his interest in flight, and now is building an ultralight plane in his basement.

Although the upper floor of his home just outside Rockyford is nothing out of the ordinary, when one ventures into the basement a half built plane is there taking up the right half of the building. To the left are hundreds of boxes with millions of parts for models along with many of the finished products themselves.

The boxes of plane related magazines, pictures, flying suits, specialized tools and damaged models are Myslawchuck?s passion. The different model planes he?s built over the years are something to be proud of, but aren?t what he focuses on. It?s the fixing and improving things that he loves to do.

Attached to the house is a double garage with different motors, larger parts and a plane?s body that he?s working on improving right now. It?s the fixing and re-building that he lives for.

His hanger is behind the house. It?s surrounded by cars that people have given him or he?s bought hoping to fix up. Inside the hanger are at least three planes, two cars, a tractor and various different motors, vehicles, wings and models. Almost everything is in a state of repair. The finished products are hung on display because they?re just not used as much anymore since Myslawchuck has planes he fits into that he can fly.

?If I?m awake I have to be doing something,? says Myslawchuck. ?I have six million jobs on the go right now.?

Some nights in the summer he says he?ll be up until the crack of dawn working on all the different things he has to get done. It?s not uncommon for friends or neighbours to bring by motors or other mechanical things for him to fix up for them.

?Everybody knows what I do,? says Myslawchuk. ?They are more than happy to provide me with something to do every once in a while.?

The need to challenge himself everyday means Myslawchuck has bought and found almost everything he has second hand. He says scrounging and bargain hunting has always been something he needs to do. A lot of the parts he needs are tough to come by and finding some of the older style planes is much easier when looking through used things.

Whenever Myslawchuck sees someone with a wrecked plane, model or otherwise, he?s ready to take it off their hands and try to fix it. He has one model that is made entirely of foam and when he got it from someone it was in a million pieces. Once he managed to get it all glued back together he flew it right into the ground himself and had to start all over. It now hangs in the hanger, looking as if it were brand new, and chances are, never to be flown again. He doesn?t want to be fixing it anymore.

All the work Myslawchuck does is precise and takes time. The plane he?s working on in his basement he bought from someone hoping to make some alterations and has since torn it all apart so he could re-build it with the proper amount of glue and right types of nails.

Everything about his hobby requires precision and accuracy. Due to the stresses a plane undergoes while in the air it?s no surprise that everything has to be done just so. With many of his projects he?s working on improving what someone else has done or designed.

?You?ve got to know what you?re doing,? says Myslawchuck. ?The air is the most challenging arena to work in.?

If something were to go wrong with the structure of the plane while it was in flight it could be total destruction for a model, but for the ultralight planes Myslawchuck builds and flies himself it could mean something much more serious.

While flying one of his first ultralight planes Myslawchuck got his ankles caught under a bar during a landing and it broke both his legs. He was up and walking within two-weeks but had to have corrective surgery years later to realign one of his feet, which had set at a slightly unnatural angle. It never kept him from flying though. A mere couple months after the accident he was back up in the air.

When he joined the air cadets at 17 he spent four-years learning how to do everything properly and what to do in the event something went wrong. In those years he only missed one of the weekly sessions.

Once finishing with the air cadets Myslawchuck went on to try out for the Air Force. When that didn?t work out he started repairing planes, and did that for two-years. Since then he worked for Canada Post until retiring. He got his pilot?s license again in 1977 and flew for a few years but found it was too much of a hassle. That?s when his interests were primarily models.

A friend had a couple ultralight planes and a place to fly them and when he was invited to go out and try them he just couldn?t refuse. Ever since then he?s been back up in the air and doesn?t plan on stopping anytime soon.

When Myslawchuck moved out to the Rockyford area in 1991 he found the ideal place to be. The property has everything he could ever want. With three different workshops and room for a runway it looks like the perfect place for someone who needs the space to build something as big as a plane.

His neighbours are not only understanding about the planes flying overhead some of them are involved in the activity themselves. He says that you couldn?t find nicer or better people than the area has anywhere in the world. The picture is something like a post card. The rolling hills with bailed hay in the background and a yellow plane just hovering over the landscape.

?People would die to have a place like this.?