Hello! My name is Andrew Ricks, and this blog documents my experience building a Wittman Tailwind — both to keep myself accountable and to give future builders a reference for learning from my mistakes.
I’m 27 and live in Madison, Wisconsin. At 15, I started flying lessons at Middleton Municipal Airport – Morey Field (C29), paying my own way through babysitting and lawn mowing jobs after school. I soloed at 16 and earned my private pilot certificate at 17.
In 2021, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville with a degree in mechanical engineering and joined Textron Aviation (Cessna) in Wichita, KS, as a Tooling Design Engineer where I got to help build the very aircraft I’d learned to fly in. After two years there, I moved to the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR), performing full-scale static and fatigue testing on commercial and military aircraft. In 2026, I returned to Wisconsin to join DarkAero as an engineer, working to bring the DarkAero 1 to production.
Passionate about aviation and always needing a project to work on, I decided building planes all day long at work wasn’t enough, so in July of 2026 I started my journey of building a Wittman Tailwind. My hope is this blog can serve as a way for me to document the build of this incredible aircraft, and be a source of information for future builders.