The first MXL I bought as a dealer had the 'Solid Gold" sail. It was all one color ! It was pretty. It had no ailerons. It had rudder on the pedals and I as many other MX drivers found out, did very little with right/left stick inputs.

My first flight was a near disaster, almost losing it at the last second, dropping a wingtip badly. I called a friend to test fly it since I had done a fair job of assembly, it should have been a better experience. He came out after work one evening during the week. He had flown hang gliders, Soarmaster units, the first local MXII, he was well qualified if anyone was. He had also just recently gotten his GA ticket.

I suggested he taxi up and down a few times to get used to the steering, there was none, and I was awestruck when he just floored it, and took off. He flew up about 500 feet, level slow turn to the right and then proceeded to do wingovers, hammerheads, and several other unnamed manuevers. Returning to the airport, he stated it flew very well.

At this point, I figured that if he could do that, I could at least get it off the ground and safely back again. In evaluating my poor attempt at the 'L', it was apparent that my heavy boots and my near lack of any rudder pedal time were factors in the transition from an MX to an MXL.

Me and the L became good friends. I always rented planes since I felt it was incorrect to teach someone to fly and then require them to buy an exspenive plane to continue flying. The L became the next step after the MX. Many learned in a weight shift with the Yamaha engine, soloed and then flew my TSKS Special with the single cylinder Cuyuna. The MX was next and then on the MXL.

We had a fly-in every weekend, as there were fifteen planes hangared at the local airport. The whole airport was actually ULs since the GA crowd abandoned it several years earlier. Lawn chairs for the women, shipping boxes filled with peanuts for the kids, ultralights for the guys. It was a grand time. Fly-ins where food was available would see thirty or more planes if the weather was good. Lots of activity.

The first L's had spoilers rather than the ailerons. About the middle of August 1983, the sails came through with the aileron velcro sewed into the trailing edge seam. November of 1983, the dealer representative came through on his honeymoon. He had an MXL with the newly designed ailerons and we flew it for a day. I ordered aileron kits for all the MXL planes I ever sold as they worked so much better than the spoilers. The Quicksilver people were always very good when it came to relations with the dealers. The aileron kits were sold at a bargain price but only for existing planes.

My first L was actually an export model. It had the six gallon tank, the heavy axle, tubes, etc, and probably was over the 254 pounds by a bit. Later models got the lighter parts such as the straight axle with .058 wall, many parts with .035 wall, shorter seat frame, shorter prop shaft, etc.

The dealer bit was wearing thin in the mid 1980's and I began to make stuff for resale. I was making fiberglass parts but started doing parts for resale in earnest. I bought aluminum and a tubing bender and went to work. To use my parts effectively, I started building copies of the Quicksilvers with many improvements. I bought a lot of the steel parts, manufactured parts and made many of the tubing parts. Customers were hungry for custom planes with bigger motors, fancier sails, lots of extras, etc. One of the more popular planes I built was nicknamed 'Ronnies Rocket' after the first buyer. The airframe was mostly stock MXL but the driveline was a 503 with the 66 inch prop kit I had developed.