question about protecting tied down craft

[Savitar]

After spending much time, effort and money on building their planes, I'm sure most builders would like to keep the plane in a hanger. Unfortunatelly, there is a big cost difference in tie-down vs. hanger space. If you have to tie down outside, would it help, hurt or make no difference to cover and tie down the whole craft with tarps of a suitable material? I know there was an individual (Shirley Dickey?) who made custom tarps for the Cozy. However, these "bonnets" only protected the canopy area and the top of the fuselage.

[Waiter]

As for Hangars, Keep in mind that EZs unique parking can allow them to share a Hangar with other EZs or other aircraft. When I lived in San Jose, we had 5 EZ in a box hangar, the cost per EZ was about 1/2 the cost of an outside tie-down.

 

Tie-downs - If you do use a cover, make sure its good quality, and secured to the aircraft. A Cover flapping in the breeze can do a lot of damage to an EZ.

 

Although Aircraft ramps are becoming more secure, One of the problems I've experienced with outside tie-downs, is my EZ becomes an Impromptu Static Display, that every one and their family mustr go and look at, climb on, touch, bang against, etc, etc, etc.

 

 

Waiter

[Drew Swenson]

The other issue is that it is very difficult to do maint/improvements outside---unless it was some pretty simple maint. Just took my first flight of the year after remounting my axles (had a toe out situation corrected to 1/4 deg toe in---also corrected 7 deg of camber). This small down maint period also entailed changes to the wheelpants due to the axles. Also removed all the side to side nose gear slop by switching to taper bearings. Very happy with the changes.

 

BTW, I have room for one more EZ at KBLM (NJ).

[Kent Ashton]

I've made Cozy covers out of Sunbrella and truck-tarp material. It takes an industrial sewing machine and a lot of fitting to make a cover. In both cases I used a liner over the canopy made of a softer car-cover type of material. They both did OK and the liner did not scratch the canopy.

 

For 4-5 years I used to cover my entire airplane, wings, winglets, canard and prop. Took about 10-15 minutes to put it on the jammies. Boy, it's sure nice to have a hangar now, though.

 

Either Sunbrella or rubberized tarp will keep most water out of the airplane. Tarp material is waterproof but heavy and probably overkill. Sunbrella is a good choice if you have the machine to sew it. It gets wet but dries out pretty quickly and doesn't breakdown under UV. Choice of delicious colors. :-) You have to incorporate good straps to keep it from flapping.