Like many young boys dreaming to be licensed pilots, Larry Robbins remembers at the age of six or seven scooting out the front screen door of his parents central Illinois farm house where he grew up to get an overhead glimpse of any and all planes that came within earshot.

His love of aviation led him to pursuing a career as an Aeronautical Engineer and his latest job with Bojac Aviation Services.

“Right now I'm enjoying some time off. I have been an independent contracted systems engineer for the last 10 years, most of the time on the road, supporting the development of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner,” said Robbins.

His time off takes him back to his Deerfield Resort subdivision home in LaFollette, TN. Deerfield Resort is nestled between the Cumberland Mountains and the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains on the beautiful peninsula of Norris Lake, north of Knoxville, TN. His home there with wife, Karen, fulfilled another dream from long, long ago to live in a subdivision that had its own airstrip.

With a degree in aeronautical engineering you might expect that Robbins would also be a pilot, which he accomplished in 1974 while attending Parks College St. Louis University. Many pilots like to spend time in their hangars and Robbins especially does in his decked out pilot's cave within his 56' x 60' hangar. His hangar is fitted with a 44' x 14.6' Schweiss bifold liftstrap door equipped with auto latches and a remote opener.

Parked within the hangar are his 1946 J3 Piper Cub and Glasair 1 experimental that he built himself. In 1980 the kitplane industry was revolutionized by the introduction of the Glasair - the world's first pre-molded composite kitplane. The Glasair is an ultimate high performance aircraft. With its Lycoming engine, the Glasair is a fast, sleek, aerobatic machine that will take you across the country at a maximum speed of 260 mph in mere hours. Glasair kits have been delivered worldwide.

“I built it in my basement. I quit keeping track of time when I saw how long it was going to take. It was a 10-year project from start to finish. We used to live in Rockford, IL and relocated to the Atlanta area. The plane was maybe about half done. I loaded it on a trailer behind my car. At every gas station I stopped at they wanted to know if anyone was hurt,” recalled Robbins. “The time that you are building something like that you're dreaming about the day you will have it done and be able to take off and go where you want to go. I sat in the airplane and thought, ‘My Lord, what have I done.’ It doesn't have the potential to hurt anyone until you rev up the engine and pull back on the stick - it went fine. It was kind of like your first solo; you'll never, ever forget it.”

But it's the J3 Piper that commands the most interest in this story.

“My dad bought it in 1955 for $175 - the whole thing, including the engine. It had been sitting on floats on the Illinois River when a storm came through and blew one wing down into the river. It was fetched out of the river and taken apart. Dad bought it as a basket case. Later on when dad told me where he got it and how much he spent, I told him he should have bought the floats; they were a set of EDO 1320s, which would be worth as much as the airplane today. Dad said he didn't have $175 for the airplane and they wanted $500 for the floats,” recalled Robbins.

His dad spent a couple of years, part time trying to reassemble it. When he ran out of time and money he hung it up in the rafters of his farm machine shed. It hung there for years and years until Larry was about a year from graduating high school. Over the three years he was attending aviation school they cleaned it up together and it's been flying ever since 1975.

“Dad was one of those proverbial student pilots who never got his pilots license. Every now and then he'd pull the Cub out, we had a strip on our farm, and fly it around. I said, ‘Dad, you really ought to get your license.’ He responded by saying he was just flying it over his own property,” chuckled Larry.

Robbins “Pilot Cave” is something to behold. The entire 3,600 sq. ft. of floor is tiled and has a full scale inlaid replica of a P-51 Mustang complete with machine guns taking center stage. He said he wouldn't have tiled the floor but did it because he had the world's worst concrete job put in by a young local company. Also in his hangar is a 1969 Plymouth Barracuda Fastback with 28,000 miles on it. A Barracuda from this year was his first car.

Robbins was first introduced to Schweiss Doors years ago.

“The straps just made so much sense to me. I was the first one on this field to have a Schweiss door. When I built my hangar, I also built another one for a friend who also has a Schweiss door on it. A few years later I built a hangar for another friend and it has a Schweiss door in it. Now there are others here that have Schweiss doors on them. I looked at one other manufacturers door that had a design that would go up higher; it didn't do anything for me. My door has been working well for me, it's quiet and goes up and down when I ask it to,” said Robbins.