Dream Take Flight

By Michael W. Michelsen Jr.

It doesn’t take much more than a passing glance at Lisa Turner before you think of Amelia Earhart. And if her face, hairstyle, and tall, lanky frame doesn’t convince you, her gung-ho, can-do attitude toward flying and practically everything else in life will.

In her youth, whether she was building play forts or hitching a ride on a self-propelled lawnmower, Turner has always made her unconventional girlish roots conventional.

That’s why, in the early 1960s, she chose to pursue flying as a career path. Not only that, but when she wasn’t seated in a cockpit, she was building her own aircraft, eventually becoming a perpetual state of affairs in her Florida garage.

Doing It Her Way

To look at Turner now and hear her speak, you would never believe her background. Born into a broken home with an alcoholic mother, she grew up with a dream to fly. In fact, achieving her flying dreams eventually became a promise she made to her mother before she died.

“I have heard that when you grow up in a situation as I found myself in, you find other releases,” Turner explained. “I think that’s true. I grew up with a lot of conditions that I could not control, but when I found flying, I found that not only could I control it, but I was pretty good at it too, which excited me, and I wanted to tell others, especially young women.”

Unfortunately, even as she gave more and more time to flight, her life outside of flying wasn’t so kind. A broken marriage, financial issues, and other factors deterred her but could not turn her away from her love of flying. In fact, she soon found herself digging deeper.

More Than a Passion

There probably aren’t many pilots who haven’t, at some time in their lives, dreamed of building their own airplane. Unlike many of those dreams, however, Turner did it.

Not only that, but she became a celebrity among her neighbors, who frequently gathered in the garage of her home to encourage her and even to offer an occasional hand with the process.

“To a certain extent, I was pleasantly surprised with what I found out while building my airplane, which was a Pulsar XP kit,” Turner said. “I first thought that I would have to endure a bunch of guys coming over to show me how to do it, but that’s not what happened.”

What did happen is that she found the love of her life and discovered other projects that fueled her aviation dreams.

“My husband is unbelievably supportive of my flying,” Turner said. “He lends a hand whenever he can and even supports me in other things I have started doing.”

Among those other things are writing books and often speaking to groups, especially when they are of young women, to encourage the pursuit of their dreams.

“I think flight is an incredibly good metaphor for so much in life that a person might want to accomplish,” Turner said. “I’m lucky to have found flight because after I graduated with a degree in English and philosophy, I was ready to follow the American script of a job, which for me was opening a bicycle shop. Fortunately, I sold that and went back to school to study engineering and eventually becoming a manufacturing engineer.”

Over the years, Turner has held a variety of jobs, including human resources director, business coach, home inspector, and chief training officer for Tyco Fire and Security Services.

Flight in Flight

Her first flight lessons came when, after she finished her undergraduate degree, her pilot brother-in-law gave her a gift of flight lessons. After soloing for the first time in 1975, her private pilot training was put on hold for two decades, but her flying dreams never faded. She returned to the air in 1995 and earned her private pilot certificate.

“After I earned my private pilot’s license I could hardly wait to visit all my family and friends in an airplane, but renting an airplane was prohibitively expensive,” she recalled.

Not to be deterred, Turner decided to build her own plane instead. A trip to SUN ’n FUN to shop for the right aircraft to build narrowed her choices to three kits. A visit to the Aero Designs factory in March 1996 led her to select a Pulsar.

Then, at the age of 45, Turner started construction of her airplane in the two-car garage of her home.

As Turner relates in her book, “Dream Take Flight,” her biggest challenge in building her own airplane was convincing friends and family that she wasn’t crazy.

“This was besides the point that I really wasn’t sure I knew enough to build an airplane,” she recalled. “Fortunately, some of these kits are so good it’s amazing. It’s not like some of the kits today, although I did have to source some of the parts, such as the wiring, avionics, upholstery, choose an engine, and additional hardware. I also decided to upgrade the brakes. That decision led to some creative engineering to get the feeling I wanted.”

Finally, on Dec. 6, 1997, after 20 months and 1,835 build hours, Turner’s Pulsar was complete and ready to take to the skies.

“Building that plane was a total labor of love,” Turner said. “I knew I loved aviation when I got started, but building that plane was also a process I fell in love with.”

After Turner test flew the airplane, she set her sights on another challenge: Flying a 4,000-mile round-trip from south Florida to Bar Harbor, Maine.

“It was a challenging trip, especially for a firsty like me, but I loved every minute of it,” she said. “I encountered a lot of the usual difficulties, such as fog, turbulence, and a clogged fuel filter, but I consider the trip to have been a total success.”

Perhaps most importantly, Turner’s trip allowed her to reconnect with her family, who weren’t entirely convinced that she would be able to complete the trip.

“When I finally arrived in Maine, my family greeted me with open arms,” Turner recalled. “I was even able to reconnect with my father, who I hadn’t seen since I was six years old.”

The excitement of that first flight led Turner to begin writing for the first time. In fact, she could not NOT write, as ideas flooded her mind.

“Flying that airplane changed me,” she said. “It opened a lot of possibilities for me and convinced me that not only could I accomplish things, but I could also do them very well.”

Flying convinced her that she had what it took to complete many mechanical projects, including home improvements. After her flight she wrote several other books including two that covered the subjects of home inspection, productivity, goal setting, and taking tests.

Her next book will be about restoring antique aircraft, which she is writing with her husband.

For more information about Lisa and her projects: DreamTakeFlight.com