Steve Wright's Stagger EZ

[Jon Matcho]

The October 2005 issue of EAA's SportAviation just arrived with a 7-page spread on this most unique canard design.

 

The article gives good insight into the motivations behind Steve's modifications, which mainly came from building his own VariEze, flying it for 1,000 hours, and then test flying several other canard aircraft to come up with his list of improvements.

 

As with many canards, especially the customized sorts, cooling has also been a problem with the Stagger EZ. Seeing the plane at Rough River this year, you can tell Steve was still at it after having recently chopped up his cowling for cooling configuration #n+1. I'm sure he'll figure that out soon enough.

 

Congratulations Steve!

[Remi Khu]

In addition to the cooling issue, there are mumbles of the StaggerEZ being a static looker but a real dog in the air from anonymous canard drivers at RR. It's just hear-say, but it was said.

[Jon Matcho]

Hmmm... you'd have to ask, "compared to what" with a statement like that. The plane is a hybrid VariEze/Long-EZ/Cozy III/ERacer/Velocity, so which one of those is fast and which is slow?

 

FWIW, here are the published performance figures:

• Take-off roll with passenger: 85 knots
• Landing (with power off): 72-73 knots
• Climb rate (with 2 passengers & half-fuel): 1,000-1,200 fpm
• Climb rate (with 3 passengers & full-fuel): 900-1,000 fpm
• Cruise: 175 knots TAS
• Lean cruise: 150 knots TAS @ 11,000 ft (5.9 gph)

Not too shabby.

 

From what I read in the article (or didn't see at least), speed was not a driving factor for Steve's design. It was comfort and simplicity, which it looks like he certainly has.