I've been thinking of experimental homebuilts for a long time. I zeroed in on the Just Highlander Extreme because it meets myflying mission perfectly. I’ve lived in Alaska since the 1970’s. I learned to fly about 20 years ago. Pretty much all of my flyingexperience has been here in Alaska. I plan to use my plane for to go places where you just can’t go without an airplane. I liveon a lake so my long range plan is to put the airplane on floats.
I met with the Just factory people at Sun N Fun in 2012 and took a brief demo flight but I wasn 't in a position to start buildinguntil recently. I'm retired and for the last 7 years I've been working as a pilot here in Alaska in the summer and traveling in thewinter. I decided to give up the summer job after the 2013 season and by coincidence a friend who had a Highlander kitdecided to sell. Gary Jamieson bought his kit from the Factory in 2010 but never got started working on it. His kit, a HighlanderExtreme, has all the mods that I wanted. Gary decided he wanted the new Super STOL model and he wanted to build at theJust factory.
I bought Gary’s kit and he bought a Super STOL and spent the summer of 2013 building his plane at the factory.I considered the Super STOL but decided the Extreme was a better fit for me. The increased performance of the Super STOLis offset by the increased weight of the aircraft and the extra expense ($14,000). I’m pretty sure the Extreme model will take me anywhere I really want to go in the real world. It will be interesting when Gary and I get to fly our planes together. Gary may be able to find some places I can’t go but we’ll see.
So now my kit is in my garage and I’m getting started. Unfortunately I’ll be leaving in a few weeks and be gone for the winter .For now I’m getting all the parts organized so I can find what I need when I start building next spring. It will be nice not havingto work next summer. I should be able to work on the plane almost every day.
