Building a plane in my garage. You'd be surprised how minimal yet how strong a lot of these structures are. The vast majority of the material I use is thinner than a credit card.
I want to hear more about building a plane in one's garage. Are you using a kit? How hard is it? Cost? How will you transport it to an airport once it's finished?
Kit: Yes, in my case it's an RV-8 by https://www.vansaircraft.com/ they're probably the biggest name in town by volume and they make mid-cost kits. There are some more and less expensive options however.
Hard: I took a class from a licensed A&P mechanic and while not mandatory, gave me a pretty good idea of what I'd be up against. It is extremely challenging even with a kit however. Lots of learning, lots of redoing stuff because of mistakes, many many hours.
Cost: whatever you want it to be really. You can do safe builds probably from around 40-50k for something like a Sonex or Kitfox to several hundred thousand for a Velocity twin or even something turbine powered.
Transport: most people build in their garage and leave the wings off then stick it in a trailer or U-Haul to complete final assembly at a hangar. It's mostly a non-issue.
Kits have become progressively simpler to build. The example like the RV below would conservatively take over 1500 hours. A newer Vans RV-12, much less. A Rans S-21, possibly 600 hours. Looking at their wing build:
dramatically simpler than an RV-8. My -8A flying cost was about $75K a decade ago, it would probably take at least $90K today. An S-21 would probably be more.
Some kits come with a folding wing option, so they can be trailered.
The primary decider in the difficulty/time factor is community and your Technical Counseler [1] (usually a multi-kit builder and FAA approved). If you’re able to build near a very active community (Livermore has a lot of RVs), these people will show up at your house/hangar and get/keep you going. Amazing people who can teach you a lot.
