Sean C. Morgan
Eddie and Diedre Springer of Holley don’t get up and go to work in the morning.
Instead, they stay home to run an Internet business telling people how to build turbojet engines, which earns them enough each month to pay the bills and make ends meet.
The two were married in December. Diedre is from Sweet Home and attended Sweet Home High School. Eddie moved to Sweet Home from Salem where attended Sprague High School. Both earned a GED.
The practice of turning turbocharged engines into jet engines is a relatively common pastime around the nation. Eddie and his father, a mechanical engineer always working on something, did it at home. Eddie took it one step further writing a manual explaining the process.
He sells the manual through his website and on Ebay, an Internet auction site. He has expanded his product line to include a variety of things unrelated to engines, including old public domain radio shows, which he burns to compact disc and mails off to buyers.
His Internet site, http://www.springerdev.com/jet, grew out of this jet engine project, started in 1996. Eddie started producing his manual in 2000.
“After some trial and error and considerable thought, we successfully built a turbojet engine using an ordinary truck turbocharger, some exhaust tubing and materials found around most automotive repair shops,” Eddie said. “We constructed several turbocharger/turbojet engines that run on propane or diesel/jet fuel. We created an Internet website dedicated to our hobby and received so many questions that we decided a detailed construction guide would be appropriate.”
The total cost should not exceed $500, Eddie said, and it requires no special skills or engineering knowledge, although they help.
The concept in a turbocharger is the same as a turbojet engine, Eddie said. Air is compressed into a small space to build pressure and released to produce thrust.
The range applications for this engine are wide, Eddie said. “I’ve had guys build go-carts. I’ve had guys build jet cars. Most people build them for a test stand?. And I always get a few nuts. About once a month, I get somebody who wants to put one in a backpack and asks if it will work.”
On a typical day, Eddie sells four or five copies of the manual. Diedre does the accounting for the business. Eddie maintains the website and prints the manuals.
“I love being able to stay home and do that and be on our own schedule,” Diedre said.
“You end up working more hours than you would” in a regular job, Eddie said.
But they can take the work anywhere, Diedre said. “I knew he needed help with it. I didn’t expect for it all to just go.”
“We’re coming up with all kinds of stuff to sell on Ebay,” Eddie said. “It’s a gold mine.”
In addition to old radio shows, they also offers Lord of the Rings coins, based on the fictitious lands of the novels, but they want to come up with even more ideas.
Eddie worked a soy sauce plant in Salem before starting his business, he said. He makes better money with the online business, and he thinks it could be even better ? “If I could just find more things to sell.”