ARLINGTON – Listening to Mike Drew of Kirkland, you might think anybody could build a plane.

“A couple of old guys did it who didn’t know what they were doing,” he said. “It was on my bucket list.”

He and a friend he wouldn’t name built the RV12 plane from a kit in Marysville, but use Paine Field in Everett as their home base. Drew said their plane is different from others of that style because they used a $15,000 engine from a Honda Fit. A Florida company retrofits the engine for use in planes.

Most planes of their style use Rotax engines, which cost twice as much, Drew said. They’ve invested about $75,000 in the plane.

Drew said he is retired with “nothing else to do” so they took their time, taking 1 1/2 years to build it. He had owned planes and flown them, but building one was not easy.

“A few times we were pulling our hair out because it wasn’t right. We’d go back and re-read and watch video,” to fix it,” he said.

Drew remembered when they finished the first part of the plane – the tail.

“We were so proud of ourselves,” he said, adding it took them a day, and how he knows it should have only taken two hours.

He admitted he “was a little bit nervous” the first time he flew the plane because “you never know.”

He said because it weighs less than 1,320 pounds, it can be hard to land “on a really windy day.”

But if the weather is good, “If you’re going 65 knots it can land itself.”

Even though Drew built an experimental aircraft, he said he doesn’t like to take a lot of risk.

“There are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots,” he joked.