Brian Lloyd, EAA 1089436, had a unique introduction to aviation. Brian had moved into a room above a garage, and the man living in the house proper was working on an RV-6. That roommate experience showed him building an airplane was possible.
Then, when he attended the EAA Oshkosh 1994, he decided to build an airplane himself after a stop by the ultralight area inspired him.
“I was sitting down at the ultralight section, and I said, ‘Jeez I like this,’” Brian said. “And the Mini-Maxes, there were quite a bit of them back then, and they were flying. So I went home with the plans. I started building it, but life got in the way. I was raising my son and everything else, and I put it away.”
Brian said he was taking a leap of faith — he had never been in a small airplane when he began working on his Mini-Max. That didn’t matter to him though, because he had always wanted to fly.
Brian said some he also needed to make some changes in his life before he could to take to the sky. Approximately 12 years ago, when he decided it was time to get serious about his flying dreams, he weighed 569 pounds.
“I said this is it,” Brian said. “This is it. I have to stop. I have to turn around. I have to change what I’m doing. The biggest thing was flying. I wanted to fly. It was a lifelong dream of mine.”
So, Brian got to work. With the Mini-Max still on pause, Brian worked hard and lost a lot of weight in order to follow his dream.
“From about 11 years ago to four years ago I had lost a couple hundred pounds, got down to 369, which was still too heavy to fly,” he said. “I said I want to make this a combined goal; I want to complete what I had started back in 1994 and build this Mini-Max, and lose 100 pounds in order to fly it.”
In the time since November 2013, Brian has completed and flown his Mini-Max, both with a test pilot and from the left seat for few short hops. He also earned both his sport pilot and private pilot certificates during the build, despite still being 12 pounds short of his 100-pound weight loss goal.
“When I started this project, I had never been in a small airplane,” Brian said. “ I had never flown a small airplane. So I got down to about 315 [pounds], and I wandered over to the FBO across the way while I was building my Mini-Max, and I said to him, ‘I’m 315 now, at what point am I going to be able to start taking lessons?’ And he says, ‘You know what, I got a 106-pound instructor here, and we got a CTLS, let’s see what we can do.’”
On his way to take his first lesson, Brian said he remembers being a little worried. He thought, what if, after all this, he didn’t end up liking flying all that much?
“I’m thinking to myself, I’ve got a lot of time, effort, and money involved at this point,” Brian said. “Boy, I hope I like this! But it turns out I love it.”
Brian credits both his local EAA chapter, Chapter 106, where he currently serves as president, and the Lonesome Buzzards online community with providing him invaluable help. He said Team Mini-Max was indispensable as well, with Brian usually getting questions answered within a few hours.
In addition to his constant Mini-Max motivation, Brian said support from his wife helped make it possible for him to continue reaching his weight loss goals.
“I’ve lost [another] 88 pounds; my wife along with me, she lost 74 pounds,” Brian said. “We kind of did it together. We’ve been hiking and bicycling. We’ve created a very active lifestyle.”
Brian is planning more extensive flights in his Mini-Max, hopefully, he said, in the next few weeks depending on the New England weather.