Hi,

I am curious to know if it is legal or OK to build as many of these unsupported, By the original manufacturer, aircraft as you want. The reason I ask is because when I purchased the Cozy IV plan, serial 1760,  I had to sign a document that I would not monkey with the design and that I would only build one.  It did not mention building and selling parts of them though. However, I see many companies selling Long EZ and other aircraft that are no longer offered. Al at Aerocanard is the only person I can find that offers a cozy in kit form, but I know he has permission. By the way Al is a very cool guy and will help you out with canard info if he can whether you buy something or not. The guy video chatted with me for an hour about a partial build I was going to buy that they said was an aerocanard. I asked Al if he would look at it with me and he did not hesitate. In my book the guy is first class. 

Anyway I always wanted to build aircraft when I retire in 10 or so years and often wondered at the legalities of building Long EZ for sale or Quikies, or anything really. By the way, I am aware of the legal responsibility of doing that and ramifications. Maybe not 100% as I am no lawyer, I just play one on TV..lol. Seriously though I did take a few Aviation law classes for my aviation degree so I am only partially dumb. Also I plan to retire outside the US. In a more pliable country. 

The funny thing is I don't care about making money, I just want to help poor kids reach their flying dreams. I was dirt poor. Actually I did not even have dirt so... It took me until my 30s to reach my dreams, although I knew since age 5 I wanted to fly. Bad choices as a teen made me miss a very small oppurtunity to maybe fly for military if I would have been able to join at the time. I had to become a little more successful to afford my dream and that took 3 decades plus some years but I did it and I'd love to help kids in my previous position to make their dreams a reality. Before you ask why wait start doing that here. I am trying with my local orphanage/boys home but there is lots of red tape. I also want to approach the high school as well. I can show them my build and I have space for a team of kids to build a long EZ or whatever.  I guess we will see. 

Anyway if you know the answer to my original question please respond and blue skies people.

Rafael

Marc,

i read your presentation and other things you have recommended.  I especially looked up your recommendations. Very solid advice I plan to follow. Thank you for caring enough to put that stuff together for us new builders. Also I did not see anything about the fuel leak issue the cozy girls mention on their you tube video. 

Do you know about this issue were after 50 hrs or so fuel can leak in some builds and start saturating foam so that overtime you have a much heavier craft and the other issues they mention? Do you think racing fuel cells instead of the tanks in the manual would be safer and better? Has anyone installed fuel cells? I can't seem to find any info on this except one picture of what I think is a version of the long ez. Anyway thanks for the great info. If I don't hear back when I get to that stage I will post a question on fuel cells or not or the fix the girls came up with. I am going to try to get a hold of them. I hear they are super nice and love talking planes. 

Blue skies

Rafael

I've made some small progress:

The nose gear retract worm drive had a significant bind in it. This was noticeable through the hand crank when I originally acquired it, but was more evident after it had been cleaned up and turning just the gear. Seemed to be caused by the worm gear shaft not being perfectly straight; the worm gear also had a small chip in it, so maybe it had a (hard?) landing without the gear fully extended. Ended up flipping one of the worm gear bushing blocks around and shimming it with a couple layers of UHMW tape; spins pretty freely now.

The nose gear fork faces where they interface with the wheel spacers were as cast and nowhere close to square, so the fork was making very little contact with the spacers. The axle bolt had some signs that the spacers were moving relative to the bolt. So I filed the faces; they're not perfect but they're a lot closer. Didn't have any blue, but a sharpie worked pretty well.

Before:

After:

Most of my effort has been expended on trying to figure out what to do about my engine mount extrusion (EM12) situation. What I've got is non-standard in a couple of ways.

Firstly, it has this aluminum bar on the bottom, going from left to right and an extra bolt to mount it. I presume, but don't know for sure, that this is one of the mods that was done when the 360 was installed. In my opinion, it does nothing except add weight, so I removed it. But in doing so, I noticed the biggest issue so far.

There is supposed to be, per plans, another horizontal bolt holding the EM12 in, which is part of why I was asking this. This bolt is missing on both left and right sides on the bottom, but is present on the upper pair. Normally, I would just install said bolts, but given that installing them would require drilling into the fuel tanks, I've been trying to avoid that. I've done some analysis, and so far haven't come up with a load case that stresses that missing bolt in a meaningful way.  However it's a pretty complicated joint with a variety of materials; and the fact that I don't quite get the way it's intended to function means I may be missing something. On the other hand, my conclusion is supported by the fact that the epoxy and flox surrounding the EM12s shows no signs of cracking; though, with the limited hours in service, it's not a guarantee of future success. The other potential mitigating factor is that, as another mod to support the big engine, the engine mount has had two extra legs welded on to it which bolt onto the main gear carry through bolts; mount shown below. These extra legs add weight and require extra holes in the firewall; I'm not a big fan of either of those things but I like the extra load path and not having to puncture the fuel tanks. If others have reasoned opinions on the best course of action, I'd appreciate hearing them.

In the course of all this, I also discovered that three of the 10 vertical bolt holes that are used to mount the EM12s miss the spruce blocks embedded in the spars. So I've got to fix or mitigate that somehow; probably cut the hole open from inside the spar and bond in an additional spruce block.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the aluminum firewall because it was pretty beat up. Removing it became necessary anyway in order to do something about the spinning studs that held the angled rudder pulleys; the pulley brackets have to be replaced with steel ones per CP49. What's interesting is that the plans mentions that they may spin and to slot the ends to hold with a screw driver; so this is a known problem and, in my opinion, not a great solution. Four of the six were already slotted, and I had to add another. The combination of the slots and locking nuts resulted in two of the studs being damaged during the removal. The rudder bellcrank brackets also require replacement with steel and their bolts also spun which required making holes in the fuselage. Not a fan of all these buried fasteners with no anti-torque mechanism other than flox and hope (in vain). I'm going to figure out something better so this doesn't happen again. Given that I am missing one of the bellcranks, need new brackets, and that I don't have rear mounted brake master cylinders, I'm looking for other solutions to rudder actuation. The most straightforward is, I think, to use pulleys instead of bellcranks like the Cozy does; if anyone knows of something better please chime in.

The engine mounts always need to be engineered for the job. It is likely that the torque reaction of the UL390i is similar to the O-235, because it revs slightly higher. Other higher torque engines are already used in EZs. You just design the mount for the job. In any case the Lycoming mounts are not used with UL engines.

BTW, the UL390i is 140hp. The UL390iS makes 160hp.

I think propeller design issues are more of a concern. These are things we can investigate in simulation.

The UL-390 is 160hp vs the 235's 108hp (some are rated at 115hp@2800, but with a static RPM of 2400 or so, it doesn't do you much good) and you need the engine mounts beefed up not for the extra engine weight, but for the extra engine torque. A modern 390ci vs a 1940s designed 235ci torque would be pretty dramatic.

It would be wise to listen to those who have built and flown these.