Having invested the requisite years of considerable sweat, some blood and, yes, a few moist-eye moments building a single-seat Pitts Special, the project was trailered to an FBO’s hangar at Buttonville Airport, northeast of Toronto, Ontario. Here, tucked away in a corner, final assembly took place: installing and rigging the wings and controls, tensioning the flying and landing wires and bolting on and tracking the propeller.
I had never run the engine, having bought it through a salvor from a Lake amphibian that had turned over in a windstorm while on land. It had come without accessories, which I had slowly been procuring from here and there. I also had converted the engine from carburetor to fuel injection. Now seemed like an appropriate time to run it, if only to ensure it would crank and start and to check for leaks from the myriad oil and fuel lines I had fabricated for the inverted systems. The time had come.
