page_title: Paul Poberezny
section_title: Aircraft experience
hierarchical_section_title: Paul Poberezny / Aircraft experience
caption_attribution_description: English: Pober Junior Ace (NX5K)
context_page_description: Paul Howard Poberezny was an American aviator, entrepreneur, and aircraft designer. He founded the Experimental Aircraft Association in 1953, and spent the greater part of his life promoting homebuilt aircraft.
  Poberezny is widely considered as the first person to have universalized the tradition of aircraft homebuilding. Through his work founding EAA and the organization's annual convention, he had the reputation of helping inspire millions of people to get involved in grassroots aviation.
context_section_description: Poberezny flew over 500 aircraft types, including over 170 home-built planes throughout his life. He was introduced to aviation in 1936 at the age of 16 with the gift of a donated damaged WACO Primary Glider that he rebuilt and taught himself to fly. A high school teacher owned the glider and offered to pay Poberezny to repair it. He hauled it to his father's garage, borrowed books on building/repairing airplanes, and completed the restoration soon after. A friend used his car to tow the glider into the air with Poberezny at the controls; it rose to around a hundred feet when he released the tow rope and coasted to a gentle landing in a bed of alfalfa. A year later, Poberezny soloed at age 17 in a 1935 Porterfield and soon co-owned an American Eagle biplane.
  In 1955, Poberezny wrote a series of articles for the publication Mechanix Illustrated, where he described how an individual could buy a set of plans and build his or her own airplane at home. In the magazine were also photos of himself fabricating the Baby Ace, an amateur-built aircraft (and the first to be marketed as a "homebuilt") that he bought the rights to for US$200 a few years prior. The articles became extremely popular and gave the concept of homebuilding worldwide acclaim.
  He designed, modified and built several home-built aircraft, and had more than 30,000 hours of flight time in his career. Aircraft that he designed and built include:
  Acro Sport I & II
  "Little Audrey"
  Poberezny P-5 Pober Sport
  Pober Jr Ace
  Pober Pixie
  Pober Super Ace
  Poberezny made the first test flight of the EAA Biplane example Parkside Eagle in 1971, which was constructed by students of Parkside High School in Michigan.
  His 1944 North American F-51D Mustang, dubbed Paul I, which he flew at air shows and air races from 1977–2003, is on display at the EAA Aviation Museum in Oshkosh.
caption: The Pober Jr Ace
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