Retired Alaska Airlines mechanic Harold Smith never hesitates when he's asked when he's going to finish building his kit airplane.

"Tuesday," he always answers matter-of-factly.

There's never a week, month or year attached to the Tuesday, and that's the great thing about it, according to the 71-year-old Smith.

Smith has been working on a 3/4 scale kit replica of the iconic P-51 Mustang for nearly four years. When completed, the two-seat airplane will have a snazzy olive drab paint job mimicking a World War II fighter squadron and a 166 horsepower motor that will allow it to cruise at 168 mph. It's the third aircraft Smith's built from a kit in his personal hangar at Thun Field in Puyallup.

"You don't sit down and eat all of an elephant in one sitting," Smith said. "You eat it piece by piece."

Smith is one of a select group of aviation enthusiasts in the area in the process of or who have already completed building an airplane from a kit. Most belong to the Puyallup chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association.

The local EAA chapter serves as a place where builders can get together and learn from each other the ins and outs of building a kit airplane.

"Kit airplanes are a much more affordable approach to owning an airplane," said Kevin Behrent, EAA's Puyallup chapter president who been working assembling a Van's Aircraft RV-4 kit he bought in 1999.

Those who buy airplane kits have the ability to test the waters of the project before investing a lot of money. Van's sells the kits piece by piece so builders have the financial flexibility to purchase the pieces as they go.

"With new airplanes, you have to have the big check," Behrent said.

Pieces in the newer kits come all match-drilled, so assembly is user-friendly.

"There are also no surprises with these kits," he said. "A guy can build an airplane and it's going to fly just like everybody else's airplane."

Kit builders can also personalize their aircraft however they please, right down to the badge on the airplane bearing the builder's own name. Behrent added flat screen monitors in his RV-4 that display GPS moving maps and weather and traffic feeds.

"It's the latest stuff - airline pilots would be jealous flying behind this stuff," said Behrent, 47.

John Brick, a former Air Force F-100 Super Sabre, A-7 Corsair II and A-10 Thunderbolt II pilot who also served as an air liaison officer at Fort Lewis, completed his RV-4 kit four years ago.

The 69-year-old Brick flies his airplane nearly 200 hours a year, going on cross country trips with his wife to visit family in Las Vegas, Green Bay, Wis., and St. Louis, Mo.

"It's really a big advantage to be able to make multiple stops throughout the Midwest on your own schedule," said Brick, who also puts together the chapter's newsletter.

"To do that on a commercial airline is expensive."

While the freedom to go wherever they please whenever they want is a huge bonus, builders are more interested in the overall process of assembling the kit.

"While I enjoy flying it now, I'm not doing anything new," Brick said. "When I was building it, there was a daily sense of achievement ... I was doing something new."

Even though Smith is on his third build, he's still just as entrenched in the process as he was in the beginning.

"It's good therapy," he said. "It keeps your mind active ... you're learning something, and there are so many different areas you're learning."

Even though that process may take a decade or more, few are ever in a rush to finish.

"It was a childhood goal of mine to build an airplane," Behrent said. "I now have a much better understanding of how an airplane works and the attention to detail that goes into it.

It's been quite an experience. I just don't care (about setting a completion date)."