Marcie Ratliff/Winonan

Over winter break I built my own airplane. It only took me about 10 hours.

A Cessna 172, she’s a four-seater with the cutest blue seats, a snazzy paint job, and a four-cylinder engine.

When most people hear the words “small plane” or “private airplane,” they picture a Cessna 172.

First flown in 1955, this iconic plane has high wings and a blunt roundish nose, and of course, it’s a tricycle gear, which means it has three wheels, one in front and one on each side. A sweet little airplane.

In my case, however, the term “little” takes on, shall we say, an extra significance.

Lacking funds and (let’s be honest) technical know-how to build an actual Cessna 172, I built a 1/48 scale model.

So the real 172 is 48 times bigger than this little gal.

When I was a kid, one of the odd things my family did was go to air and space museums.

I grew to love the cavernous rooms filled with shiny old airplanes, smelling of old canvas and perhaps mold, the hush of voices echoing off the metal bodies of helicopters and amphibious aircraft, the smooth concrete floors, the velvet ropes and signs that told us not to touch.

When it’s on the ground, a plane seems huge, especially to a child.

But when it’s in the air, it becomes a speck among clouds that look solid.

Such a tiny hunk of metal, held up by nothing but air and Bernoulli’s principle.

Before 9-11, when my family flew around to visit relatives, we got to peek inside the cockpit and see the rows and rows of switches.

Somewhere along the line I learned how those funky steering wheels worked, and why there were pedals, and what it meant to eject.

What fascinated me most, however, was the concept of flight.

Freshman year, I took Winona State’s Fundamentals of Aviation class.

I figured I might as well dip my toes in the water, and I became something of a flight aficionado.

Part of the class was a field trip to the Winona airport, where we got to go up in a little Piper Warrior and buzz low over campus on a golden spring afternoon.

Then my classmates and I poked around the hangars, their corrugated metal ceilings high over our heads as if we were in a cathedral.

The smell of engine oil and fuel and metal brought me back to the air and space museums of my childhood, and outside on the runway the sky seemed closer and bigger, penetrable, if only I had wings.

It’s been two years since I took that class.

I still look up every time I hear a plane overhead, trying to identify it, wondering who is flying it.

I still get excited every time I fly in a commercial jet, especially when I get to see the flaps and ailerons on those huge wings.

I love to read about crazy fliers who dared to do the impossible.

I love the history of female aviators too, their willpower, their desperate pioneering spirit that has paved the way for who I am and what I like to do.

Perhaps one day I will get a pilot’s license and take to the skies. But for now, I have this little 172 to remind me to keep my eyes open.

Contact Marcie at [email protected]