My life and my ultralight go through hell.

My ultralight became unflyable in the fall of 1995. My wife had never worked and we were struggling just to raise our two children and make all the payments on time. I was never able to save any money for new fabric for my ultralight. It was spent even before it was earned. I moved the MX into Buck's old hangar. Buck made an error in judgment after about 25 hours of flight time and crashed his ultralight into some power lines with his wife as a passenger. They both lived and were relatively uninjured, but within 6 months, both required surgery to repair a knee and a shoulder. About $3000 damage was done to the ultralight, and Buck repaired it. He sold it shortly after that and confided in me that for the 5 hours or so that he flew after the airplane was repaired, he never felt comfortable. I'm sure if he stuck with it, he would have regained his confidence, but alas...another one bites the dust. Even though the airplane was out of the weather now, it was still unflyable and I didn't have the money to repair it.

In the spring of 1998, after 14 years of marriage and with a 12 year old daughter and 6 year old son, my wife announces that she doesn't love me anymore and is filing for divorce. I was heartbroken. I went though a very tough time in my life. Depression, anxiety, I almost lost my job. I worked through it the best I could with the help of a really great divorce support group. In 6 months I was dating again, even though I probably shouldn't have been. 12 months later I was on my third girlfriend since my divorce, and we were getting along pretty well. She lived about 100 miles from me and I was looking for a job closer to her, but couldn't find one. In July of 2000, I was laid off from my job. I found one 2 months later in the same town where my girlfriend lived. I moved into my own apartment, leaving my children behind, only to visit every other weekend, or whenever their mother allowed it. Divorce is a real mess, especially when children are involved.

I disassembled my MX and brought her with me. I put the wings and tail and other small parts in my storage unit. I originally intended to put the whole thing in the unit, but by the time I had everything packed away, there wasn't room. The major portion of the ultralight sat outside in the weather once again, next to my girlfriend's shed with all bolts, nuts, muffler, engine and everything else all exposed to rain and sun. Definitely not pretty.

My girlfriend and I got married in the Fall of 2002, and I moved into her home. I was constantly longing to fly again. When my new wife was my girlfriend, she completely supported my desires to restore my Quicksilver and fly again. That support slowly dwindled over time when I started to save funds to start the process. In June of 2004, we were financially secure enough that I had the money to spend to start the process, but my wife fought the process tooth and nail. She didn't want to spend the money. After several days of an extremely hard push to get the project going, she finally accepted that it was going to happen and gave her blessing.