My grandma's drunk cousin built an airplane from scrap wood and old farm machine parts in a barn in his 70's. There were no suitable fields or roads to act as runways, so the crazy bastard installed skis on the plane, so he could take off and land on lake ice.

The plane looked like a real plane and eyewitnesses have confirmed that it actually rose to 1-2m height on short trial runs, but he never really got to fly the thing. His wife was rumoured to actively have been sabotaging the project so he wouldn't kill himself, but I believe he just didn't really trust the plane to be able to handle the stress of actual flight maneuvers.