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Starting again, Quickie


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Well iv been thinking a lot about what is most suitable for me as an aircraft

 

and after discussions with the LAA and several people, iv come to the conclusion that building a Berkut style aircraft is not really going to achieve a lot for me, we are limited in engine power in home builds here, also i have opted for a simpler and faster to build design

 

also one that suits and fits the shape and size of my available Autoclave and manufacturing facility's a bit more comfortably

 

also of note is that the long ez/berkut style aircraft has been done to death by lots of people and there is nothing new to be gained for the community, the quickie has not had any parts made for it for a long time and its a shame as its a really nice aircraft

 

so now i am opting to make my aircraft in the style of the old Quickie Q200

I will be looking to use the Wilsch Diesel engine still, and using prepreg carbon for the wings and fuselage

 

i will be using the original design of having the wheels on the end of the canard and not the Tri-Q design

 

also of note is that the Q200 used an LS1 canard, this was the design the Roncz was based from (the LS1 was made before the roncz canard existed)

so i will investigate the possibility of using the Roncz airfoil for the canard

 

i my next decision will be to work out the method to build the canard from, whether to use the tubular spar as used in the later LS1 canard, or possibly a rohacell wrapped spar section that is cured in place with the rest of the canard in a closed mold

 

anyway for those that dont know what im talking about here is a picture of the aircraft, the original quickie was a rutan design

 

Posted Image

 

 

Started Cad work for the wing

Posted Image

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You may want to look around as a Quickie airframe can be purchase for about $1,000 (without the wings). May save you some time and $$$.

 

Saw one a couple of months back goins for $1,200, was only missing the canard, engine and prop...

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You may want to look around as a Quickie airframe can be purchase for about $1,000 (without the wings). May save you some time and $$$.

 

Saw one a couple of months back goins for $1,200, was only missing the canard, engine and prop...

 

yup i know if anyone see's one for sale let me know :)

 

 

however ill still carry on with this

 

hopefully i can bring the design back to life :D

 

plans are already available via quickheads.com

so hopefully if a few molded and machined parts can be made available then there should be enough there to build an aircraft

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My neighbor has one for sale. It has flown but is now being sold as a project (no engine) which sounds like it could get you up and running while you are working on your project. He runs the quickiebuilders.org website and hosts the October fly-in . His contact information is on this page.

T Mann - Loooong-EZ/20B Infinity R/G Chpts 18

Velocity/RG N951TM

Mann's Airplane Factory

We add rocket's to everything!

4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9, 10, 14, 19, 20 Done

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Id prefer one as an unstarted kit if possible

 

logisticly it wouldnt be easy to transport a built aircraft from the US to the UK either

Understood.

 

I looked at the design as a possibility a while back and came up with what I considered to be positives and negatives.

 

On the plus side it's fast and cheap to operate. I flew down to the fly-in last October and they had some very nice examples that had flown in from very distant locations.

 

On the negative side, they land very fast and with the gear out on the canard tips like that, they can be a real challenge to your reflex speed. Imagine trying to land in the rain in a crosswind and hit a puddle with the upwind wheel. Need I say more.

 

also of note is that the long ez/berkut style aircraft has been done to death

Might one assume there is a rational reason behind that choice?

T Mann - Loooong-EZ/20B Infinity R/G Chpts 18

Velocity/RG N951TM

Mann's Airplane Factory

We add rocket's to everything!

4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9, 10, 14, 19, 20 Done

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Understood.

 

I looked at the design as a possibility a while back and came up with what I considered to be positives and negatives.

 

On the plus side it's fast and cheap to operate. I flew down to the fly-in last October and they had some very nice examples that had flown in from very distant locations.

 

On the negative side, they land very fast and with the gear out on the canard tips like that, they can be a real challenge to your reflex speed. Imagine trying to land in the rain in a crosswind and hit a puddle with the upwind wheel. Need I say more.

 

 

 

Might one assume there is a rational reason behind that choice?

well yes i understand why the ez type is so popular, but i suspect part of that is the huge amount of builder support they have in the form of the cozy and others

 

yeah i realize they do tend to land very hot, thats a slight concern but hopefully something ill be able to get used too and live with

 

the trade off is that it is a very quick and economical little ac so i believe it would suit me well

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Sounds good.

I would suggest one mod for sure.

Hinge the canopy from the front.

Reason: While a lost canopy makes for a real squinty eyed ride, it will still fly.

A lost canopy on a quickie will result in more drag that lift and you will be landing very soon.

 

The Dragonfly (a similar design) that went down in Arthur, Nebraska on June 11 still had power but the canopy was nowhere to be found. Theory has it that the canopy opened (side hinge) and departed shortly thereafter.

T Mann - Loooong-EZ/20B Infinity R/G Chpts 18

Velocity/RG N951TM

Mann's Airplane Factory

We add rocket's to everything!

4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9, 10, 14, 19, 20 Done

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well yes i understand why the ez type is so popular, but i suspect part of that is the huge amount of builder support they have in the form of the cozy and others

 

yeah i realize they do tend to land very hot, thats a slight concern but hopefully something ill be able to get used too and live with

 

the trade off is that it is a very quick and economical little ac so i believe it would suit me well

the reason for the good builder support is there are many builders that have completed aircraft and they can fly them. the Q2 is lacking the builder support because if one is completed and flown it is not long before the builder has sold the aircraft before some one gets hurt. they are just not good safe aircraft. they look good on paper but just are not that good of a design. if it was a good design don't you think there would be a few more flying or still flying. and to build one with the gear on the canard well, is just not smart. if you are set on this type of aircraft I would look at the dragonfly, it has way better flight characteristics. still some what of a handful on landing, even though the speed is less then an Ez, most of the Dragonflys get flown. why? because they don't tend to scare the hell out of their owners quite as often as the Q2. do your homework. talk to some owner/ fliers of both and ask them how much they fly them and how many times they have had a close one. why do you think there are so many for sale that did fly but the owner decided to sell the aircraft and engine separate? They know if they sell it to someone that they will get hurt. If you do your homework and still decide on this aircraft, I will say have fun building and good luck on the flying thing.

Evolultion Eze RG -a two place side by side-200 Knots on 200 HP. A&P / pilot for over 30 years

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the reason for the good builder support is there are many builders that have completed aircraft and they can fly them. the Q2 is lacking the builder support because if one is completed and flown it is not long before the builder has sold the aircraft before some one gets hurt. they are just not good safe aircraft. they look good on paper but just are not that good of a design. if it was a good design don't you think there would be a few more flying or still flying. and to build one with the gear on the canard well, is just not smart. if you are set on this type of aircraft I would look at the dragonfly, it has way better flight characteristics. still some what of a handful on landing, even though the speed is less then an Ez, most of the Dragonflys get flown. why? because they don't tend to scare the hell out of their owners quite as often as the Q2. do your homework. talk to some owner/ fliers of both and ask them how much they fly them and how many times they have had a close one. why do you think there are so many for sale that did fly but the owner decided to sell the aircraft and engine separate? They know if they sell it to someone that they will get hurt. If you do your homework and still decide on this aircraft, I will say have fun building and good luck on the flying thing.

 

Lynn,

 

I would second your emotion about the dragonfly vs the Q200. I also agree with your understanding of the canardtip gear.

 

Burt designed the quickie (single place) to be fast, easy and use an 18 hp engine (I think ONAN) using the diving-board-like canard to absorb the landing forces. (cheap and easy) When Gary LeGare redesigned it to a 2 place, it became a real hot-rod, especially with the O200 engine (and the new canard. (it was originally designed for a VW with, I believe a GU canard).

 

Bob Walters (an ex-top gun and AE, while furloughed from an airline) took the basic concept of the Quickie and expanded it to a 2 place with manners, called the dragonfly. My understanding is that this was done without knowledge of the quickie company who was, with Gary, attempting the same thing. (Walters was finished first and brought it to OSH the next year, or thereabouts)

 

The Dragonfly has much more wing and canard area and the geometry is different. This made it a really delightful aircraft to fly. It was originally designed with the outboard gear (the canard is flexible and strong enough to withstand this and it made sense) There are still those who built the d-fly with this gear and love it. It does have several problems which are the main reasons that most of the currently constructed ones have inboard gear of the tail-dragger variety. A few have gone to tri-gear.

 

The canard outboard mounted gear is very sensitive to any pebble (a hyperbole) that one gear hits before the other as the arm is quite large and ground handling is a little squirrly. Additionally since the wheel base (between the wheels) is about 20' taxiing on smaller taxiways is a challenge. It is also quite springy and relative intolerant to hard "arrivals"

 

Landings, because of this long lateral moment become more tricky.

 

The result is that early on, inboard gear was developed, originally mounted in sockets embedded into the canard (called the MK II). these gear legs were formed fiberglass They suffered some weaknesses where they were bent to get around the wheels and provide a pad for the axle.-- Come to think of it, I don't remember anybody in the early days protecting them from IR-- perhaps that's why they broke).

 

Anyway shortly after that, the hoop gear was developed (MK II-H), a gear similar to the e-zs. Some made this out of steel also.

 

The inboard gear (combined with removing the anhedral of the canard) took an iffy plane and made it a delight to fly, and land (as long as you landed it like a canard, and not like a skyhawk.

 

In the tailwheel configuration (with actually few of the typical tailwheel problems of other planes), the wing starts to fly when the airspeed gets to a certain point, (from what I remember about 60K). you have no control of this since the elevators are on the canard. The tail wheel just pops up at that airspeed. It does not continue to rise as it will go into a negative angle of attack, so you don't nose over on takeoff. When you arrive at canard flying airspeed, a little back pressure and the plane just levitates. Landing is much like any other canard, come in close to the ground, flair only into takeoff attitude. With the tailwheel configuration, when you feel the first main gear touch the ground, do full forward stick-- no it won't nose over, but the up elevator will nail the canard to the ground so you can slow down and when you reach the magic airspeed, the tail will gently lower. Judicious braking is the word of the day as you can nose over with heavy feet. It does give plenty of warning so you can get off of the clampers.

 

Then came the nosewheel configuration where the gear was angled differently and the nosewheel put on. I personally don't think that that was much of an improvement since the tailwheel was so easy to fly.

 

So a little dragonfly History..

 

Colin, If you are going to go this route, get on the dragonfly list. A bunch of good people, willing to help if needed.

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I Canardly contain myself!

Rich :D

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Colin

Looking at your first comments in this tread they just don't sell me on your reasoning for the change. If your going throught all the trouble of building tooling for your project,I would thing that you should end up with a design that has more support and a better track record. After all it was your gut that choose the Berkut style aircraft first.

As far has simpler to build aircraft you may want to go to a fixed gear design. A much safer ground handing aircraft. You may loose a little performace, but a 360 and constand speed propeller should make up for it.

I hate to be bias the Berkut type airplane just looks great.

 

Bob

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Colin,

 

I think that your first idea were much better, the problem in my opinion was that you were trying to make so many changes at once, new design new materials, etc. If I were you I would first design and build a new fuselage (molded, without autoclave it isn't really necessary for such a plane), I would also build moldless wings per Berkut specification (I've heard that you have Berkut plans and manuals), and in the next step I would eventualy try to build molded wings. You could build a really nice fuselage, I did a short sample for guys at HBA (attachments) it was only a sample and of course you can make a better one, (I raised up an engine about 7" like in the Stagger Ez). Please note it's only a sample and I'm not going to build it.

 

Take care

Seb

 

btw renderings made in Solidworks

post-2134-141090168965_thumb.jpg

post-2134-141090168972_thumb.jpg

post-2134-14109016898_thumb.jpg

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Thanks for the comments

 

I may have found an unstarted Q200 kit that looks like a good deal im just looking at the shipping costs

 

do you think this is a good purchase?

Well ....... if you throw out all of the above posts, I'd say yes! Go for it.

T Mann - Loooong-EZ/20B Infinity R/G Chpts 18

Velocity/RG N951TM

Mann's Airplane Factory

We add rocket's to everything!

4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9, 10, 14, 19, 20 Done

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Well ....... if you throw out all of the above posts, I'd say yes! Go for it.

Funny how it is human nature to selectively hear what we WANT, and use it to justify what we want.

Maybe ColinB will engineer out the gremlins of this design.

He must, if he plans to sell any quantity of them in the future. I think those that really check out the Quickee opt for a better airplane and move along to find other airframes. The flight landing characteristics persuaded me NOT to buy one several years ago when I was looking at it.

Maybe there are other things driving ColinB's graspings. Deciding on building a Quickee in CF with molds and prepreg and the expense/timeline hardly seems rational for what you end up with.

My .02

Self confessed Wingnut.

Now think about it...wouldn't you rather LIVE your life, rather than watch someone else's, on Reality T.V.?

Get up off that couch!!! =)

 

Progress; Fuselage on all three, with outside and inside nearly complete. 8 inch extended nose. FHC done. Canard finished. ERacer wings done with blended winglets. IO540 starting rebuild. Mounting Spar. Starting strake ribs.

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well id say not to think about planning to sell any quantity

 

 

im more thinking of just getting the q200 kit to get the AC built and flying as standard and possibly not bothering doing any extra effort with carbon ect

 

the berkut based thing can run along side (albeit more in the background) as the more deepthought and engineering project while still having something i can build and fly in the Q200

 

my main fancy for the Q, is the fact its relativly cheap, quick aircraft and fast build as a kit, is the Q really that bad as an aircraft to avoid it ?

 

im just curious if its more about biases and allegences to the long ez design or actually something seriously bad about the Q ?

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No bias here. Not building a Long. I'm building a derivative of the CozyIV.

I dont think anybody here is biased. They even have said to go visit the Q'builders/owners forums...pretty even tempered advice.

Ask around, do your homework about the Q. If its what you want, just go buy one for 9-10 grand...and forget building one. They are cheap enough that you cant possibly pay yourself even 60 cents an hour to build it plus buy the needed materials. WHY the heck would anybody BUILD one at that rate?

Course this is only what I came up with a few years back, YMMV.;)

Self confessed Wingnut.

Now think about it...wouldn't you rather LIVE your life, rather than watch someone else's, on Reality T.V.?

Get up off that couch!!! =)

 

Progress; Fuselage on all three, with outside and inside nearly complete. 8 inch extended nose. FHC done. Canard finished. ERacer wings done with blended winglets. IO540 starting rebuild. Mounting Spar. Starting strake ribs.

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well id say not to think about planning to sell any quantity

 

 

im more thinking of just getting the q200 kit to get the AC built and flying as standard and possibly not bothering doing any extra effort with carbon ect

 

the berkut based thing can run along side (albeit more in the background) as the more deepthought and engineering project while still having something i can build and fly in the Q200

 

my main fancy for the Q, is the fact its relativly cheap, quick aircraft and fast build as a kit, is the Q really that bad as an aircraft to avoid it ?

 

im just curious if its more about biases and allegences to the long ez design or actually something seriously bad about the Q ?

I had no bias toward any deign when I started. looked a many designs, but over the years you see things happen and you notice trends with certain aircraft. the trend I have seen with the Q2 is they take just as long to build as most other aircraft and many are never finished. of the ones that do get finished most do not fly much. many who have built a Q2 did so because they thought it would be a lesser expensive aircraft to build and be faster to build. what they thought and what they experienced where two different things. many of the Q2 owners I know tell of all the testing and reworking of the aircraft to get to be a good flyer and dependable. of the builders that still have their Q2's many of them still have a long list of things they need to change. three of the Q2 owners I know now have other aircraft. what do they have, a long, a cozy 3 and a dragonfly. many owners just stopped trying to make it a good aircraft, got tired of all the failures or scared out of the sky. am I biased against the Q2 well, yes, but it is for good reason. why spend all that time and money to build a design that has a track record of not being very successful. when there are so many designs that you could build that have a good track record. also why spend 5+ years and $ 25,000 to build a plane that might be worth $ 10,000 when you are done. some will say because I want to build my own, and thats fine, but there is a reason that they are only worth $ 10,000 when they are flying. they perform like a plane that cost only $ 10,000.

Evolultion Eze RG -a two place side by side-200 Knots on 200 HP. A&P / pilot for over 30 years

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You seem a bit disappointed at the lukewarm response to your plans Colin, but I suspect that is because it is a bit hard to discern what the plan is... Wanting to bolt an engine that does not exist, (and does not seem likely to ever exist) is a problem too... :cool2:

 

I have not built or flown a Q, but have read a bit about them. The QAC newsletters claim the LS-1 predates the Roncz, but I hadn't previously heard the claim that the Roncz was based on the LS-1, and don't see what advantage would be had substituting one for the other. They were developed to stop the GU pitching down in rain, and it is claimed the LS-1 works. The plans are out there to build the LS-1, why change it?

 

Check out quickiebuilders.org for a lot of information, and more Quickie builders and flyers than you will get here. You don't have to LEAVE though, a lot of what is chewed over here will be relevant. You will also find a link to an Aussie builder who supplies cf spars for the LS-1.

 

I think most builders stop when they do the sums and realise they will have to go way over the designed max gross weight if they want to do something radical like carry a passenger AND fuel. Most of those advertised for sale have low hours, maybe for the same reason.

 

I understand the UK (assuming this is where you are from) regulator is just as restrictive as the Australians used to be. The rules here used to mean you could only build to plans, with no deviations other than the ones THEY imposed... Are you able to make the changes you want to?

Mark Spedding - Spodman
Darraweit Guim - Australia
Cozy IV #1331 -  Chapter 09
www.mykitlog.com/Spodman
www.sites.google.com/site/thespodplane/the-spodplane

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Oh, i dont have any particular need to change it to roncz, all i was intending to do was to plug the roncz and the LS1 canard airfoils into the CFD program and see if and what differences there might be

 

but yes your correct the UK can be quite restricting on mods

 

i guess i will need to have a little think about what im going to do

maybe my original ideas where there better ones

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  • 2 months later...

Quick update (pun intended ;)

 

i have now bought myself a Tri-Q

its been flying before over in the states, but is now in a stripped down and paint-less state for our LAA inspections

 

so the winter is going to consist of repainting, and fitting engine and avionics

 

however the good thing is i will now have an aircraft to play with and fly in while im building the other :D

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Let me be the first to say, CONGRATULATIONS!!:D

Self confessed Wingnut.

Now think about it...wouldn't you rather LIVE your life, rather than watch someone else's, on Reality T.V.?

Get up off that couch!!! =)

 

Progress; Fuselage on all three, with outside and inside nearly complete. 8 inch extended nose. FHC done. Canard finished. ERacer wings done with blended winglets. IO540 starting rebuild. Mounting Spar. Starting strake ribs.

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Best thing is, the price i got it for is a mere fraction of the price it would have cost me to build one :D

 

 

and i also know some very very good pilots (ex airforce fast jet instructors) who will be more than happy to come fly with me when i first get it and make sure i get used to it safley :D

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