A Bird’s-Eye View – Hangar Flying | Aviation

By Timm Bogenhagen, EAA Member Programs Specialist.

This piece originally ran in the July 2023 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.

Like so many of you, I’ve been in love with aviation forever. I came to aviation first as a general aviation pilot and proud owner of a Cessna 140A. It was a wonderful little vintage aircraft that I owned for several years. I flew for several hundred hours before I became an employee at EAA.

When I came on staff, one of the things I was responsible for was our ultralight programs. At that time, a group of EAA staff and volunteers built, flew, and maintained a classic ultralight-type aircraft called the Flightstar. I got checked out in it by Paula Crevier, EAA 477989, and that was a life-changing experience. I just loved flying that lightweight, short takeoff and landing, open visibility, ultralight-style aircraft.

Flying the Flightstar changed the way I thought about aviation and how I spent my discretionary income. I went ahead and sold my Cessna 140A and bought a Quicksilver. Boy, did I have a ball with that. I just loved it! Doing everything at 35 mph was so much fun — takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, it does it all at 35 mph. The Quicksilver is totally open, and as much as I love that wind-in-your face feeling, I usually wore a full face shield with my helmet. I just had a ball with that ultralight, but I realized that I wanted to do a little more with flying, so I ended up selling the Quicksilver and buying a two-place Quad City Challenger.

I bought the Challenger because I wanted to share this kind of flying with other people and teach people to fly ultralights. That’s always been the best way for me to learn something — to go deep into it and teach it to someone else. So, I became an instructor under EAA’s exemption and started teaching people to fly, which was a lot of fun.

The airplane is on wheels in the summer and skis in the winter. I just love it. In 2005, I transitioned the…