Howdy From Burlington NC

[Rainey]

Howdy,

I got my private ticket in 1982 after watching my cousin piece together an Aeronica champ. One day i fueled up an Eze at the local airport, bummed a ride, and ive had the Rutan bug ever since. 
 

i accumulated about 500 h in various ga aircraft and stopped flying in 2000. 
 

 I haven't flow in 20 years and I'm considering reconnecting. I think it would be really fun (and economical) to fly a VariEze from coast to coast. 

 Peace,

Rainey

[Kent Ashton]

Howdy.  There was a Varieze on Craigslist in Wake County until a few days ago.  The ad has disappeared but may have just expired.  This one  https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/21972-sales-ive-seen/?do=findComment&comment=64825  He was asking $16K

 

[Rainey]

Hi spoke to him a few days ago on the phone.  Here are a few things that I took away from the conversation:

1986 build and approx 650 TT AF&E, C-90 engine, starter, empty weight 535, one of the mains had been damaged and repaired before he obtained the plane;

And if I understood him correctly, he did not have the original logs for the aircraft.  For the past year, he's been flying his RV, so the Eze did not get flown this summer. He told me me it hadn't been flown in a year;

He also didn't seem to know anything about possible wing spar corrosion issues.

In the next few days, I plan on going over and giving it a walk-around.

Peace,

Rainey

[Rainey]

I  spoke with the owner and scheduled an appointment for me to give this bird a look later this week.  Now to formulate a checklist of items to check and questions to ask...

😀

☮️R

[Marc Zeitlin]

14 hours ago, Rainey said:

1986 build and approx 650 TT AF&E, C-90 engine, starter, empty weight 535, one of the mains had been damaged and repaired before he obtained the plane;

And if I understood him correctly, he did not have the original logs for the aircraft.

He also didn't seem to know anything about possible wing spar corrosion issues.

In the next few days, I plan on going over and giving it a walk-around.

So let's review this. A claimed empty weight of 535 lb. is extremely suspect. The lightest VE I know of (granted with an O-200, but that's not going to make a 90 lb. difference) is about 610 - 620 lb. Most are in the high 600's / low 700's. So when someone says that their airplane is in the 0.001th percentile of weight, there should be a LOT of skepticism. 635 lb. I could believe, if the build was really high quality. But I'd be a LOT of $$$ against 535 lb.

Not having logs means that anything anyone says about the plane is meaningless - there's no record to back it up. You don't eve know what you're trying to verify at that point.

For a VE owner to not be aware of the wing spar joggle issue and the wing spar attach corrosion issue means that he's not paying any attention to the notifications put out by RAF. That's not a good sign. Did he at least know that the plane is restricted to +2.5G / -1.5G?

There is certainly nothing wrong with kicking the tires and looking at the plane, but unless YOU are a canard expert and know exactly what to look for, how to do a Pre-Buy examination and what to measure/ask, I would HIGHLY recommend that if you're serious about the plane, you get a canard expert to perform a Pre-Buy examination for you. Knowing who did the last 5 - 10 Condition Inspections and what maintenance was done on it would be extremely useful. Is the plane in CI now? Can it be demo flown? Does the owner have dual jacks so you can check the landing gear attach points? A million other questions...

See:

https://www.burnsideaerospace.com/pre-buy-examination-information

for what a PB exam actually entails.

Given the known corrosion and spar cap issues surrounding VE's, I STRONGLY recommend to my customers that they consider Long-EZ's instead.

My $0.02.

[Kent Ashton]

18 hours ago, Rainey said:

He told me me it hadn't been flown in a year;   He also didn't seem to know anything about possible wing spar corrosion issues.

Apparently he has owned it for about 10 years.    https://prijet.com/ownership/N45790      It is not too comforting that he can't produce all the log books and hasn't heard of the wing fitting corrosion issue.  I would expect a 10-year owner to know the airplane inside-out even if he didn't build it.   You might also talk to the last owner (Kilbarger).    Let us know what you find out.

[Rainey]

Thanks for sharing your perspective on this.  I, too, even as a relative newbie to this realm was stunned that he was not more conversant about the spar corrosion issue.  When I meet with him, I'll probe a bit deeper... about the spar issue and the missing logs.

Marc, over the past year, as I've been reacquainting myself with the online aviation community, I've read a lot your posts in the canard forums and I was hoping that you would reply to this post. (As a matter of fact, a few months back, I was considering another aircraft and I had entered your contact info into my phone for a possible PB exam.  I'm happy to read your 2-cents.)

Yes indeed, I expected him to be a bit more cognizant about the wing issues especially. 

Now, thinking back on the conversation I had with the owner, when I pressed him a bit further on the spar corrosion... he told me that he was sure corrosion wasn't a problem on this aircraft.  He told me that someone had "run a bore scope down there."  I really didn't know what to think about his reply, (because I have no idea what sort of methodology would be employed to reveal the presence or absence of spar cap corrosion) so I just went into listening mode.

And my questions begin to multiply as well.  Stay tuned.

Peace,

Rainey

[Kent Ashton]

Here is a description of the corrosion problem from Marc's site.  If you google a bit you can find pics of it

http://www.cozybuilders.org/Canard_Pusher/RAF_inspection.pdf