In 1929, a dozen years after the Wisener Field airport was opened in Mineola, a new airplane design was released called the Pietenpol. That design has become one that modern-day home-built aircraft aficionados find extremely interesting.

Today, two of those replicas are hangared at Wisener Field, the newest of which made its public debut on Saturday, Nov. 29. The builders, Kevin Purtee and Shelley Tumino, were guest speakers at the local Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 1147 gathering in the Royal Flying Circus Aviation Museum at Wisener Field. They made a Powerpoint presentation on the construction history of the Pietenpol, which was sitting a few scant feet away from the bevy of home-built aircraft fans who attended the event.

Purtee has been fascinated with airplanes since he was a child and remembers when he was little his father has told him that “anybody can build an airplane in their own garage if they really want to.” That idea rolled around in the back of his head for a number of years as he grew up to become a pilot and make his livelihood flying. He still flies for his income with the Texas Air National Guard. He is a helicopter pilot as are all pilots in the employment of the Army, but he is also one of eight pilots in the Air National Guard who flies the four King Air turbojet passenger airplanes that the National Guard has and utilizes on a regular basis.

Purtee and Tumino now live in Tyler, though he is only a weekend resident presently as he must be in Austin Monday through Friday for his job with the Air National Guard.

How did Purtee finally draw that idea of building his own airplane out of the back of his mind and put it into action? “I saw a guy reading a magazine about kit- and home-built airplanes and asked him if I could look at it. He said I could have it because he had already read it and he had lots more like it,” Purtee recalled.

“And that is what kicked me off dead center and got me to seriously thinking about building an airplane,” Purtee said.

Getting started and getting a home-built airplane finished and into the air are two different things.

It took him 16 years and nine months to build his first airplane, finishing it in September of 2009. That was a thrill of course, finally completing such a long project. But doing it at home and doing it in your spare time are not ideal conditions for a speedy completion of such a complicated construction job.

But the airplane was completed and he was flying it, enjoying it to the max, for a while anyway. In August of 2012 he was taking off in his beautiful home-built Pietenpol Aircamper when he encountered an engine problem and did the very thing every flight instructor tells their students not to do. He tried to turn around and make it back to the airport which he had just taken off from. And what he did was crash, destroying his beautiful airplane and almost losing his life to injuries sustained in the crash landing. When taking instructions to learn to fly, every instructor tells students if you have an engine problem taking off, just keep flying the airplane and look for a safe place to set it down. Don’t ever just try to turn around and make it back to the airport.

He did live over the injuries and he did not give up on flying a vintage home-built airplane. An effort was made to salvage everything possible from the wreck, but that wasn’t much, just a few hinges and other metal parts that were not bent up so badly they couldn’t be safely used.

And, just one month after the crash, Partee started to build his second Pietenpol Aircamper. This time it didn’t take nearly 17 years to build like his first one did. It was only four years and four months from the day this second build began until the new airplane was completed on Oct. 22 of this year.

The new ride hasn’t been flown a whole lot yet, only having clocked about 10 hours of flight time, a temporary situation that will be remedied rather quickly, as soon as the weather warms up some and it isn’t so uncomfortable to fly in an open cockpit airplane.

The airplane is two seats in line, the front for a passenger and the rear for the pilot. That leaves the pilot virtually blind at the start of the takeoff, but once enough speed is gained and the tail lifts to make the fuselage level, sight of where the airplane is headed becomes visible.

When fueling up the Pietenpol for a flight Partee has to always keep in mind that his fuel capacity is only 16 gallons, buying him a flying time of just 2.8 hours before he is out of gas. With that in mind Partee plans his trips so he lands about every two hours to fuel up, walk around a bit and relax. Partee says that flying the Pietenpol 500 miles in a day is about all he desires to do.

While flying is a huge part of Partee’s life, there is more to his love of aircraft than just soaring around the wild blue yonder. Partee’s airplane is powered by a rebuilt Chevrolet Corvair engine, an engine that has gained a lot of fans among experimental aircraft builders. The engines are old, but they are inexpensive. “If you pay more than $250 for an old Corvair engine, you paid too much,” Partee told the gathering of EAA Chapter 1475 and the Wisener Field gathering.

Partee and Tumino have become so interested and involved in the utilization of the Corvair engine in home-built airplanes they have put on four “Corvair Colleges” in the past where enthusiasts can go for a weekend to get help and instruction on working on various parts of the engine. At these weekend schools four or five different work tables are set up with Corvair ready to be worked on over and over by the students to learn the procedures on various repair issues.

The move from Austin to Tyler has the future of a fifth consecutive “Corvair college” a bit up in the air because Partee is scheduled to be deployed by the Texas Air National Guard the next spring when it would be held. However, Partee and Tumino are already working with Wisener Field on dates for a Corvair College in 2018. The first of their Corvair College sessions was held in Georgetown and the last three at the San Marcos airport. Wisener Field will now be the home of all future Corvair College sessions.