Helping people take flight: Darlene Jackson-Hanson and her husband, Gene Hanson, stand in front of one of their planes that was assembled from an airplane kit their company, Fisher Flying Products, produces. They sell about 200 of the plane kits a year.

1997 EDGELEY, N.D. (AP)
A small company based in Edgeley is helping people around the world take to the air.

Fisher Flying Products produces airplane kits for people who can't afford the standard manufactured passenger planes or who like the challenge of building their own flyable aircraft.

Inside the Jackson Manufacturing plant, in the same building as Fisher Flying, the smell of wood and glue hovers among the hundreds of plane pieces that are handcrafted on tables and neatly arranged on storage shelves. There are wing tips, ribs and fuselage parts in various stages of assembly.

Kits are shipped to the customer in crates weighing up to 500 pounds and come with about 10 pounds of full-scale blue prints. Fisher Flying provides various aids --from videos to a telephone number--for customers together.

"We have schools building them, we have farmers building them, we have attorneys building them, airline pilots building them," said Gene Hanson, the company's vice president.

Bill Adams of Sedro Woolley Wash., bought an airplane kit from the company two years ago. He has been working on it as time allows.

"I haven't finished it, but it's an excellent kit," Adams, a 71-year-old retired contractor, said in a telephone interview. "I'm more interested in building than in flying."

Fisher Flying has been in business since 1989 in Edgeley, a southeast North Dakota community of 680 people. Hanson's wife, Darlene Jackson-Hanson is its president and also owns Jackson Manufacturing, which produces the kits for Fisher Flying to sell.

"She's the boss," Hanson said proudly as he introduced his wife.

Hanson is a licensed pilot and acts as test pilot. Jackson-Hanson has not taken up flying, saying she hasn't had time to learn.

With the financial backing of Edgeley native Steve Fischer, a California businessman, the couple have built Fisher Flying into a business that has sold kit airplanes throughout the United States and 36 countries.

Kit airplanes cost far less than manufactured airplanes, which easily run more than $100,000, because the buyer provides most of the labor and assumes all liability for how the product is made.

"They buy the kit, and they build it," Hanson said. It's like a "model airplane, only on a bigger scale," he said.

Fisher Flying and other kit companies can build up to 49 percent of the airplane without being considered the plane's manufacturer.

Fisher Flying sells nine different models of kit airplanes, including biplanes, single wing, twos-eaters and single-seaters. One newer model is a slightly scaled down replica of the World War II British Tiger Moth biplane.

The models range in price from $2,850 to $11,000. All are built mostly of wood so no welding is required. The customer buys and installs the engine separately.

Standard models require about 500 hours for the customer to build. Fisher Flying offers higherpriced "quick-build" kits that come with certain parts already assembled cutting the customer building time down to about 300 hours.

"We actually sell probably more standard-build than quick-build kits," Hanson said. "Seems like somebody retired or semi-retired wants to do it all."

Fisher Flying sells from 150 kits to 200 kits a year and entertains many customers shopping for kits.

"Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of our sales are actually out of North Dakota with approximately 25 percent of that overseas," Hanson said.

The couple built a motel next to their 10,000-square foot business to accommodate visiting customers.

Adams, who has also built a metal airplane and helicopter, is putting together the Dakota Hawk, a two-seat plane that features a foldable single wing.

"It's a lot of money in your pocket, plus it's a lot of fun to build," he said.

Hanson said Fisher Flying displays its planes at the popular Oshkosh and Sun 'N' Fun fly-ins held annually in Wisconsin and Florida. It advertises heavily in kit airplane magazines and has established an Internet site.