Few people outside of the Poberezny family had as much influence on the early homebuilt aircraft movement as Ray Stits. Today, at the age of 90, he’s still going strong as a pilot, mentor, and founding member of EAA Chapter One at historic Flabob Airport. Ray has had a sterling career as an aircraft designer, mechanic and creator of the Stits Process, known today as Polyfiber.
Between 1948 and 1965, he designed and built 15 airplanes. Except for the first two designs, he test flew them all. The reason for not flying the first two relates to the nature of the aircraft: they were the world’s smallest monoplane and then the world’s smallest biplane.
