Pilots

Roger Bacon is not a flashy sort of guy. He lives with wife Janice and kids Sarah and Jack in a modest wood-frame house surrounded by fields of soybeans and feed corn in central Indiana. He drives a sensible, aging, station wagon. He wears jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers just about all of the time. And he's happiest in his shop behind closed doors, working on decidedly flashy airplanes.

Bacon calls himself and his shop Perfection Restorations, Incorporated. He launched the business a few years ago intending to specialize in restoring low and slow classics. But he came to realize that not too many people are willing to spend big money on restoring — to perfection — a relatively inexpensive taildragger. So Bacon turned to kitplanes.

He surveyed various designs and manufacturers and talked to builders, trying to decide which model to buy. He and Janice made the pilgrimage to the EAA fly-in at Oshkosh, where they went tent to tent to get some hands-on experience shaping foam and fiberglass, bucking rivets, sanding wood, and welding steel tubes. The composite designs — Glasair, Lancair, and the like — were beguiling, but at heart, Bacon is a tin bender. The clincher was a call to Questair. Bacon spent 45 minutes talking with Jim Griswold, who founded Questair and conceived the Venture design. It's a side-by-side two-seater with a somewhat discordant appearance — the short, fat fuselage sits on a narrow- chord, high-aspect-ratio wing and compact F-16-style main gear — but it's lightning fast and handles conventionally, thanks in part to spring damping in the control system.

Bacon was sold on the Venture's performance, its relative simplicity, and the congenial reception he got from the company. Perfection Restorations went with the Venture.

Bacon assists builders with their Venture projects and hires out for flight testing and fine-tuning of completed airplanes. He has been involved in the building of three Ventures, including the first non-factory airplane; the one owned and flown by the new owner of Questair, Bob McLallen; and N16JN, pictured here. It has been bought by Joe Nikoden, who currently flies an Aerospatiale Trinidad. Nikoden is giving up two seats to gain about 80 knots.

When finished, 16JN will have consumed an investment of about 3,600 building hours and $170,000. This is before avionics are installed, but otherwise, the airplane is complete, right down to a Hobbs meter.

Bacon hasn't entirely forsaken classic restorations. He's rebuilding an Aeronca Champion now, the one he's owned since 1974. That's when he bought it from his father, John. Roger Bacon began flying in the Champ at age 13 with his father, and his interest in flying blossomed. He soloed on his sixteenth birthday and got his private certificate one year later, and his commercial certificate a year after that. Meanwhile, he was learning how to turn a wrench. "I remember when I learned the difference between a sheet metal screw and a machine screw," he says. "I kept putting the wrong ones in an access panel." Those complementary interests — flying and working on airplanes — defined Bacon's subsequent career path.

After his family moved from western New York to Tucson, Bacon got a job at the local Beech dealer — working the line, helping around the shop, and doing some flying. Then it was on to Gates Learjet's Tucson factory, where, after earning an A&P certificate, he became a flight-test mechanic.

A friend convinced Bacon to move to Learjet's Indianapolis service and repair facility. He did, but by then, Perfection Restorations was beginning to take shape in his mind. "Roger always wanted to own his own business," Janice says. When they went house hunting in Indiana, they weren't so much looking for a house as a big shop with a concrete floor — a place where they could work on airplanes.

Bacon later left Learjet for a combination flying/maintenance job with an area bank, first in a Citation and later a Mitsubishi Diamond IA. He also worked at his restoration business part-time. The original concept had grown to include repair and servicing of hot-air balloons. (They still have a one- person ultralight balloon.) Eventually, the wearying schedule of corporate flying and the demands of running the shop proved too daunting, and Bacon turned to Perfection Restorations full-time.

It's not been a seamless transition. He has had to determine his pricing using the trial-and-error method, which means some costly mistakes in pricing were made early on. Bacon concedes he lacks some fundamentals. "If my business fails, it won't be because of the airplane. It'll be because I'm not such a great businessman. When I was working towards the A&P, I didn't get any business education. I wasn't taught how to read a financial report."

Bacon is getting that training now, on the job, along with learning all the other tricks of small-business survival. At least he began the business with the most important assets: "A good pair of hands and a good toolbox; that's all I've got to work with," he says.