Wally Anderson is a aircraft builder and technical counselor who has been a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) since 1984. He has served as president of the local Eugene chapter of EAA in the past, and currently he is on both the EAA Safety Committee and the EAA Homebuilt Aircraft Council.

Tell me a bit about the EAA and what the goal of the organization is.

The organization is based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. EAA is actually comprised of multiple interests, so it’s not only guys building experimental aircraft – which is a category that the FAA refers to as ‘amateur built aircraft’ – but they also handle old military aircraft, vintage aircraft, aerobatics. So it’s a broad range of interests that are all represented under that, and including flight instructors. So it’s a very large organization. There’s the largest flying event in the world, held in July – more operation out of that one airport than any other in the whole world. It’s a very vibrant group.

Their focus is really to go ahead and help people build and fly safe airplanes. So that’s how it started out, and it branched out from there. The movement actually started in the 40s, and the founder, Paul Poberezny of the organization, really had a vision for helping guys build safe airplanes. I’ve been a technical counselor for them, which is a volunteer inspector role for guys building airplanes. I’ve served on Homebuilt Aircraft Council for EAA, which is members from all over the country – around half a dozen of us – that look at all the issues facing guys building airplanes. So that includes training programs, safety programs, and that sort of thing.

It’s all pilots that are working together for the betterment of aviation. Experimental aircraft is the fastest growing segment of aviation – there is no other area in general aviation that grown faster than us. Oregon actually happens to be a real hotbed for experimental aircraft, and there are over 9,000 currently flying, with an estimated 10,000 currently under construction.

What’s the history behind the experimental aircraft movement?

We started out doing training for guys doing amateur build aircraft. So guys will come in here that want to build their own airplane safely, so we provide the training for them. The reason we’re amateur-built is that when this rule was carved out by the FAA, they did not want commercial competition. There was a sensitivity to guys not building aircraft in their garage, selling them commercially and competing against aircraft that had to meet a lot of FAA qualifications. So what they did back then was they said, you know, 51% of the aircraft has to be built by the guy building the airplane, and 49% could be built by the factory. You can get help at training and do whatever you want to do with that part of it. But the vast majority of it you’ve got to do yourself, and during inspection when you get what they call an Airworthiness Certificate on an aircraft, they actually look at your builder log info desk to determine if you met the rules. If you did, you have the ability to actually maintain your own aircraft to your own manual inspections cause they consider you the manufacturer of that aircraft.

So it’s a big privilege. A lot of responsibility, but the aircraft that are out right now are equipped at a level that actually exceeds what airliners are flying around with, as far as avionics. We work with a lot of airline pilots and they say, “We actually have way more equipment and information in our small planes than we actually do flying commercial all day long.” And it’s mainly because this innovation happens outside of a lot of the cumbersome regulatory things out there. So it’s a little bit like any high-tech startup.

How would you describe the growth of the EAA over the years?

When it started out after World War II, it was a lot of guys that were building and individually designing their own aircraft. And so as anything, some designs proved to be really good, others were not so good, and the Darwin Theory rolls in there. And so the aircraft built here in Oregon has really refined down. All of our airplanes, which are easy to construct, are high-performance. Guys often will comment about aircraft handling like a fighter aircraft. Some of these experimental aircraft that are built out there by all these builders, you feel like you’re handing a Porsche – there’s that much difference in handling them. Way more fun to fly.

The movement is just enormous, and the biggest thing to evaluate it by is the air venture at Oshkosh put on by EAA. Over a seven day period there’s over half a million people that go through the gates, so there’s a lot of interest.

What would tell someone that is interested in joining the EAA?

EAA has put the ability for people to build and own their own aircraft within the financial reach of an average person. And that is kind of what EAA started out as, and it still hasn’t really lost that goal that people can build their own aircraft for less than you would actually purchase a car. There are kits out there where in the $10,000-$20,000 range you can actually have a really nice airplane. Whereas commercial aircraft often pushes for around $500,000 to three quarters of a million dollars, EAA helps keeps aircraft affordable for the average guy, if that’s something you’re interested in.