{"id":72900,"date":"2026-08-16T03:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T03:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/72900\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T03:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T03:34:13","slug":"central-queensland-pilot-len-neales-journey-of-building-and-restoring-planes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/72900\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Queensland pilot Len Neale’s journey of building and restoring planes"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Len Neale dons his flight goggles, he is living a dream that started when he was a boy.<\/p>\n

The former tradesman spent his life working at power stations, while in his downtime he built an aircraft the now 74-year-old continues to fly weekly.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got this philosophy; if I build it, I test fly it, and a faint heart never won a fair maiden,” Mr Neale said.<\/p>\n

“You take notice of the plan, you build it right, you balance it right, and that’s very crucial.”<\/p>\n

Len Neale is an “aviation nut” who even named his son after one of his planes.\u00a0 (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)<\/p>\n

Mr Neale lives in Biloela in central Queensland and is among thousands of enthusiasts with home-built planes registered to fly in Australia.<\/p>\n

His dad’s legacy<\/p>\n

Mr Neale said his own father had always wanted to build a plane big enough to sit in.<\/p>\n

He had even bought Irish linen with the dream of using it to cover the wings of a future project.<\/p>\n

But Mr Neale said family life and a lack of funds got in the way.<\/p>\n

“He got married and they cut the Irish linen up and made bed sheets out of it,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Neale decided to fulfil his father’s ambition after he died in 1989, and since then he has built and restored two planes.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Len Neale’s build projects. (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)<\/p>\n

‘Do that bit again’<\/p>\n

Among these projects was “The Spirit of Smoky Creek”, his amateur-built J6 Karatoo.<\/p>\n

Mr Neale said it was based on a US design, but with an Australian Jabiru engine.<\/p>\n

“She’s been flying for over 10 years. I’ve got over 700 hours [flying in it] and it’s a delight to fly,” he said.<\/p>\n

As a fitter and turner by trade, Mr Neale said he had the necessary metalworking skills, but working with wood was a challenge during the build.<\/p>\n

“My old friend Kev [Wilson, now deceased] that lived here, he would say, ‘Len, I think you should do that bit again,'” Mr Neale said.<\/p>\n

“He was like a mentor, but he’d been in the Air Force during or just after World War II, so he had a lot of those skills.”<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

In Australia, amateur-built planes can be registered through the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) or through an approved self-administered organisation, which can issue permits to fly under arrangements approved by the authority.<\/p>\n

There are more than 1,700 amateur-built aircraft registered with CASA, with thousands more registered by other organisations.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Len Neale spent about seven years building the “Spirit of Smoky Creek”.\u00a0 (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)<\/p>\n

Restoring aviation history<\/p>\n

Mr Neale’s other great joy has been restoring the Australian-built plane “Miss Sandgate”, which had its test flight in 1936.<\/p>\n

He said it was originally built by immigrant Vladimir Slyusarenko, who fled Russia during the country’s revolution and later built the plane in Sandgate, Brisbane.<\/p>\n

Mr Neale’s older brother and friend Kev Wilson found the plane sitting in a shed in Gympie.<\/p>\n

“There’s a famous story that the neighbour’s wife used to run out and look through the bathroom window and it’d be shooting past on yet another forced landing from next door,” Mr Neale said.<\/p>\n

The pair brought it back to central Queensland in a cattle truck, but little was done with it for decades.<\/p>\n

Len Neale’s “Miss Sandgate” was the inspiration for his third child’s name. (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)<\/p>\n

About 30 years ago, Mr Neale restored Miss Sandgate with the help of Mr Wilson.<\/p>\n

“I’ve flown it, distance-wise, not too many long trips, but I’ve flown it as far as Narromine in central New South Wales,” he said.<\/p>\n

“That took about eight hops to get that far [because there’s] only about two hours fuel range in it.”<\/p>\n

The baby named after the plane<\/p>\n

Mr Slyusarenko built Miss Sandgate using the design from an American plane known as the Heath “V” Parasol.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Len Neale fantasised about flying “Miss Sandgate” when he was eight years old, and he first came across the plane. (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)<\/p>\n

Midway through his restoration efforts, Mr Neale welcomed his third child.<\/p>\n

“My old mentor Kev, I said to him, ‘I might get a bit interrupted here.’<\/p>\n

“So to remember to finish the aeroplane, I called my son Cameron Heath.<\/p>\n

“There’s lots of aeroplanes named after people, but not too many people named after an aeroplane.”<\/p>\n

Mr Neale said instead of the “bent piece of tin” that was originally used as a seat, he fitted it with a plastic chair for comfort.<\/p>\n

“On a real calm day, it’s smooth as silk, and it’s like going to heaven and back,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Neale has only recently cancelled the registration of Miss Sandgate, as in his older years, he preferred to fly his more comfortable J6 Karatoo.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Sport Aircraft Association of Australia president Myles Breitkreutz. (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)<\/p>\n

Sports Aircraft Association of Australia president Myles Breitkreutz has known Mr Neale since he was a child and helped on both his restoration and home-built projects.<\/p>\n

“He’s always been an aviation nut,” Mr Breitkreutz said.<\/p>\n

“There needed to be staged inspections for it [the J6 Karatoo] to be registered, and I came in and offered my service, and \u2026 eventually there it is, it was flying.<\/p>\n

“It’s a beautiful little aeroplane.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Len Neale dons his flight goggles, he is living a dream that started when he was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[18633,103124,22,21,103132,22101,103125,60769,50584,9206,1504,103126,103131,103123,103129,6325,103128,2715,91304,103127,43516,103130,74040],"class_list":["post-72900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-aeroplane","tag-amateur","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-aviation-history","tag-building","tag-built","tag-flies","tag-flying","tag-former","tag-goodnews","tag-hobby","tag-home-built-planes","tag-homemade","tag-j6-caratoo","tag-love","tag-miss-sandgate","tag-pilot","tag-planes","tag-restoring","tag-retiree","tag-smoky-creek-airfield","tag-tradie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}