How much could I build in a 1-car garage?

[Steve Innova]

Here's my problem: I want to start a Cozy IV, but right now I rent and a 1-car garage is the only realistic option in Arlington VA. How much of the aircraft can I build in a restricted space like that?

 

Steve

[John Slade]

A guy I know built his fuselage in his one room apartment.

It CAN be done.

 

My advise would be to start building now, and only stop when there's NOTHING left in the plans that you can do in the space available.

 

By the time you hit that point you'll find somewhere to do the rest.

[Wayne Hicks]

Steve:

 

You can build most all of the major structures in a one car garage! Fuselage, gear, spar, canopy, canard, and wings. About the only thing you can't do is install in the spar and build the strakes. Although that's debatable too. Depending on the actual size of your garage and how creative you are, it c-o-u-l-d be possible to install the spar and build o-n-e strake. :-)

 

So go for it! A one-car garage would suffice for the first 3 years or so. Maybe some of the canards at Manassas or Culpepper would have space for you by then. :-)

 

BTW: I'm located at Suffolk, just 3.5 hours from you if you wanna come down and stare/sit at a Cozy IV. I can show you the order of the build process and you'd get a feel for how big/small the pieces are.

 

Contact me privately through my website and we can talk some more.

 

====================

Wayne Hicks

Cozy IV Plans #678

http://www.maddyhome.com/canardpages/pages/waynehicks/index.html

[Dave Clifford]

Depending on the actual size of the garage and the door opening, you might be able to even build the strakes attatching one wing at a time, then again, maybe not. You will be far along though before you run out of room.

[Steve Innova]

That's great news. I'm going to be ambitious and aim for 3 years-we'll see. How do I find builders in my area (DC metro area)? I'd especially be interested in knowing if anyone in my area has the jigs neccessary to start assembling the fusilage. Do people re-use these jigs at all? It seems like a lot of time could be saved by reusing & sharing them.

 

Stephen

[Dave Clifford]

Lots of jigs and templates floating around. We have passed ours along to other builders so they ARE out there.

[Wayne Hicks]

Steve:

 

There are two best ways to find builders in the DC area:

 

1. Join the Cozy email discussion group through Marc Zeitlin's website. Once on that list, you have access to the members list. There are a larger number of veteran builders that participate on that list than this one. There's also a vast plethora of FAQs and archived information on Marc's site. I t-h-i-n-k there are two of you (pre-build, building) in the DC area. Most of the canardians I referred to earlier have been flying for a while now.

 

2. Join the Central States Association through their website. Besides offering the best quarterly 32-page technical publication geared specifically to canard building, Terry Schubert publishes a members directory of canard builders for the entire world!

 

As for as jigs, yeah, they're around. I'd offer you my fuselage jigs, but a funny thing seems to happen to jigs. Mine always got cut up and used for something else while I was building. The one exception seems to be the wing hotwire templates. These are treated like gold and can be borrowed from previous builders. A real time saver.

 

I did manage to save my wing jigs.

 

 

I did manage to save my wing jigs.

 

....Wayne Hicks

[Wayne Hicks]

Did I say that I managed to save my wing jigs?

[Steve Innova]

How far can I get with a 13' x 9' area?

[dust]

A Loooooooooong way.

build tub, canard, spar, mout landing gear,nose gear, elevator controlls, aileron controlls

 

everything except attach main spar to plane, turtledeck attach, top of firewall, engiine

 

enjoy the build, keep us informed on how far you can take it in the 13x9 foot area

 

dust

[rmaddy]

Let's not forget you need space to store completed parts. I started in a 1.5 car garage. After chapters 6 and 7, I had little room to get around to build anything else. With your space you may want to do chapters 4 and 5, then skip ahead to 10 and 11, then 14, 19 and 20. After you get the spar and wings put away on the ceiling, you can go back and do 6, 7, 8, 9, and 13. Then it's probably time to find more space.

 

Get started, you'll figure out what works for you.

 

Enjoy.