"At 30,000 feet, where the commercial airlines fly, cars and trucks look like ants down there,"said the 81-year-old pilot from Missoula.
Bretz is spending his retirement years working on a little experiment in his garage.
Bretz bought a kit called the Vanpis Aircraft RV-9A, a single-engine two-seater that he started building in his garage in March 2003.
"He kept saying he wanted to build a plane," Carolyn Bretz said. "But hepid ask me if I thought he was too old to build his own plane."
So she did what any encouraging wife would do.
"I asked him how old he was going to be next year," she said.
The couplepis south Missoula garage is a virtual hangar, with wing holders built in and the fuselage parked next to their white Buick.
The boxes the wings came in have been converted to shelves to store parts, and the walls are plastered with plans for the plane.
Building your own plane is not easy, but then Frank Bretz doesnpit tend to take the easy route.
At 80, Bretz passed his instrument rating, a task thatpis considered much more difficult than obtaining an ordinary pilotpis license.
"I had an experience at one point I didnpit ever want to repeat again," Bretz said. "I figured, aHey, if youpire going to fly, youpid better learn to fly it without being able to see the ground below you.pi "
With his newly obtained instrument rating, Bretz can fly through clouds, smoke, at night, or in any adverse condition where he canpit see the ground. But hepid rather not.
"Like I told them when I was getting it, I may never use it," he said.
Use it or not, Bretz likely is in rare company. He may be one of the oldest pilots in Montana with an instrument rating.
Kim Shappee, an acquaintance of the Bretzes, said she checked with the Federal Aviation Administration about how many pilots that age maintain not just a license, but have an instrument rating as well.
There are fewer than 2,000 pilots in the country over the age of 80, and only 88 active pilots in the country over the age of 91. The oldest active pilot is 103 years old, according to the FAA.
And the FAA didnpit give information on pilots over the age of 80 with an instrument rating, so Bretz could be in some rare company indeed.
But he doesnpit spend much time talking about the instrument rating, which he says was one of the most difficult things hepis ever had to do.
Age seems relative to him.
"There was this fellow who went out giving flight instructions until the day he dropped dead of a heart attack at 90 years old," Bretz said.
Carolyn Bretz smiled at her husband from across the room.
"Thatpis cutting it a little close," she said.
Because the Bretzes head south to Arizona for the winter, the plane is an on-again, off-again project.
"If I was going to stay here all winter long, we could probably have it done by next year," Frank Bretz said.
But hepis not, and he isnpit in a hurry because hepis busy doing what he loves to do.
"I just enjoy flying," Bretz said. "You can see so much from the air that you canpit from the ground, you can drive through the same country a hundred times or a thousand times and not realize what youpire missing."
Video onlineFor a video report about Frank Bretz and the plane he is building, click here .
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