How life changes!

It's hard to believe that I first made this page nearly 10 years ago. Obviously, the pictures here are waaaaay out of date - I will try and do something about that soon.

Personal websites were relatively rare back then. Now it seems virtually everybody has a schmick online presence courtesy of Facebook, Myspace, etc.

Strangely, I am actually sitting in almost the exactly same place as when I first made this page, even though I no longer live here. The computer is sitting on a makeshift table while the house is undergoing a complete renovation. I am on an away mission - my home is now 150km away.

My son has grown up and moved to Cairns with his mother and other family; I have been divorced; found love again; moved home 3 times including a couple of years back on King Island... but I still have the same job and am still building an airplane! (but a different one to that which I started with)

I am definitely feeling older and sometimes I wonder if I will ever achieve my flying goals - to build a plane and travel around Australia in it. Life has been sweeping me along at a sometimes ferocious rate these last ten years. I think I can say with authority that building an airplane is a task best undertaken in more stable life-circumstances!

However, there does now finally seem to be some semblance of stability in my life, so although it is very full with family, children, horses, renovations, work, etc., I hope to find space to continue with Sonex building... sometime! :-)

So, with that said, this is me from what feels like a lifetime ago:

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Hello!

My name is Kevin Brewster. I am 3x (hmm.. do I really need to update this every August?) years old. I work as an electronics engineer, and run my own one-man company Synergistic Electronics. Most of the work I do is for Hazard Systems, designing the electronic systems in emergency vehicle light-bars, sirens and LED message displays.  I also do occasional contract design work for other businesses, as well as manufacturing the TrueTalk speech fluency rater, used by many Speech Pathologists as an aid in the treatment of stuttering disorders.

My interests (other than aviation) include electronics, technology, computers, sci-fi & fantasy novels, radio-control electric airplanes and helicopters, motorcycles, horses and piano.  I have had a brief stint over the last couple of years at motorcycle road-racing, but have now decided there are more productive and less painful ways of burning money.  I also thought I should stop before being put to shame by my younger brother John who is now both faster and more indestructible than myself.  I seem to have caught the adult disease of self-preservation :)

I was born in Leongatha, Victoria, Australia 10-Aug-1972.  My parents were share-farmers, and when I was 2 they moved to King Island and started their own beef cattle farm.  To help make ends meet my dad also got an engineering job at the local dairy factory.  The dairy has now become quite famous for it's gourmet cheeses under the present day banner of King Island Dairies.  Dad was manager of King Island Dairies for a time, and then later the Mayor of King Island.

Now largely retired from farming, Mum operates King Island Trail Rides, following her love of horses, action, adventure and spectacular scenery.  Horseback sure is the best way to see the world from on the ground!  Plug, plug...

Somewhere back in my childhood, dad bought an ultralight aircraft.  It was one of the early Aluminium tube and fabric types.  I can't remember exactly what it was called, but it had a v-tail and was about the only twin-engined ultralight I have ever seen.  Later, dad joined the local aeroclub and got his Private Pilot's License.  In 1988, when I was 16 and in year 10 at high school, I remember our family going on an Easter holday to the Mangalore airshow put on by the SAAA.  I remember my favourite airplane was the Thorpe T-18.  Several pages of an old photo-album are dedicated solely to the T-18's I saw on that trip.

I have always been strongly interested in technology of all kinds, but especially electronics and computers.  I taught myself BASIC while in primary school from the manual that came with our first computer - an 8086 based machine running at a classic 4.77MHz.  MS Flight Simulator v1.0 was pretty hot back then on that machine! :-)

Much later, when I was 16 I saved up and bought an Amiga500 computer and taught myself to program 68000 assembly language.

My main interest was electronics however, and that's the path I pursued.  I think the flying bug had bitten me when I was quite young, but the "illness" lay dormant for many years.  I always enjoyed flying though, whether with my dad or on the many commercial flights home while going to college and Uni. in Tasmania and then Victoria.

A few years ago I sat down and wrote up an "I want" list.  Real airplanes and flying didn't even cross my mind!  But radio control airplanes did.  I had always dreamed of having a radio controlled airplane when I was a kid (doesn't everyone?) and now I had my chance to make it happen!  Being an electronic type of person I was attracted to electric aircraft, which are not so common on the R/C scene yet, but are becoming more so.  I built a number of models over the following 2 years, including 2 helicopters.  See the Radio Control section for more information if you're interested.  I learned a lot about aerodynamics, control, CG importance and the like from modelling.  I also learned that it was rather expensive (especially at the rate which I managed to crash things!).

Then one day early this year while dad was flying me back from a trip to King Island many things all gelled together in my mind and I realised that I wanted to fly.  I wanted this freedom.  I wanted to see the world like this; from up high.  It also occurred to me that at the rate I was spending money on models (and then wrecking them) I would be able to build a real plane, given several years.  Yep.  I want to build one of these and visit the world with it.

And so here I am, taking flying lessons and embarking on the biggest physical project of my life so far!