Jim Sower

Email your questions to Forest Wilson in Atlanta. He's at 16fw@bellsouth.net He built his for years and years and has been flying for 2 or 3 years.

I'm going Tue thru Fri, but then I'm going to Silver Springs and spend a few days with my cousin hanging out and being rowdy. Subject to change without notice ...

A "carrier landing" would be if you checked your touchdown speed on a "normal" landing, and then set yourself up at that speed, on a 3 deg glidepath and just drove it into the ground - no flare at all. It's not a 3-point because you're pretty cocked up at touchdown speed, but the nose bangs down right after the main mounts. Don't do this in your Cozy. <... recent landings have been much flatter, and I rarely use the speed brake ...> I would advise against this. I've operated out of airfields that have low terrain off the runway end and you can get some really nasty downdrafts on short final. I can never know they're coming, so I try to keep myself out of harm's way by staying as high/steep as is reasonabl (3 deg again). I fly a tight pattern to a 3 deg glideslope and try to plant it on the numbers every time. That way, if I go into a short field I'm as comfortable as I am at home and am not "learning" or having to do anything unusual. <... I am fortunate to have huge runways, and the further I fly down the runway the less I have to taxi ...> A sound enough enough practice (I hate taxiing for miles and miles too), but a bad habit IMO. Early landings should be "conservative" for obvious reasons. As soon as I'd mastered getting the thing on the ground, I went to precision (picking a spot on downwind and touching down ON it), and giving myself as many options as I could (around failures, unanticipated air currents, short fields etc.), and stayed there so as to avoid having to do anything unusual in an "unusual" situation. Entering the pattern fast, using the belly board for a steeper glide path and flying a tighter pattern, if an engine quits any time in the vicinity of the airport, I can make the runway - even in the groove, I just retract the belly board and continue the march. Flying a long, flat approach is [generally] more comfortable and less demanding , but I'm giving away some flexibility and options and alternatives that might be really important to me some day. And it helps me stay engaged ... a five mile pattern is boring and I'm easily distracted so it's good for me to keep the juices flowing.

He can't, Joe. At least not in GA. 5 years after I quit they gave me this nice laminated certificate that entitles me to get all righteous about smoking with anyone, anywhere, at any time.

What's a Homebuilders forum?

<... glider and motorglider certificates do not need medicals ...> As is the case with the upcoming Sport Pilot "certificate". Bottom line: She can achieve around 90% of her objectives with no medical.

I have a somewhat similar problem in that my wife is diabetic. She could theoretically get her 3rd class, but it would involve a lot of jumping through hoops. My notion is to encourage her to get all the training she can or wants to. I don't believe you need a medical for dual or ground school. That way, she could drive any time she wants, but couldn't log PC time or fly solo. She only needs a medical to get a license which is basically authorization to fly solo. She has no compelling need to fly solo in your Cozy. I want my wife to get her license (and medical) just in case I lose my medical. It's a long shot, (she would probably lose her medical before I lost mine) but you get my drift.

EAA ain't what it used to be 15 yrs ago. Neither is OSH. That said, we need all the lobbying we can get. If we write letters to EAA HQ and articulate our disgust with the commercialization of OSH and Sun-Fun, we might make a little difference. If we get our chapters to boycott, we will make a lot more difference. If it weren't for EAA, this forum and the Cozy list and C-A list and CSA wouldn't be there and I would be totally on my own. I'll spring the $50. I'm also in AOPA. If it was a choice of one or the other, it would be AOPA in a walk. The folks runing AOPA seem to have a life and do not seem to need to dedicate themselves exclusively to milking more money out of the convention than their daddy did. Every chance I get I try to promote some sort of alternatives so we can quit going to OSH and Sun-Fun. I like Sport Pilot only because I could lose my medical one day soon, and don't want to have to quit flying altogether. I would much prefer that Sport Pilot be restricted to people who used to be Real Pilots. Maybe only let in the old farts who have lost their medical. That would work for me. But Sport class airplanes are a lot safer than ultralights, so in that regard it is a good thing. And with GPS and Flight Following you don't have to know sh*t anyway.

I should have said Cozy was more fun to fly. My Velocity IO-360 (allegedly 205hp) doesn't perform anything like a Cozy or EZ. It won't make a yard over 150 kts (but I expect another 10-15 when I put wheel pants on it and clean up a bunch of oil cooler scoops and what have you. High DA takeoff can be dicey (I have to watch my weight very carefully at DA over 3000'-3500') so I can never travel west past Dakota - Kansas - central Texas. It climbs slow, turns slow and generally is not as crisp as an EZ or Cozy. It is a lot easier to get in and out of, and when my wife saw those gull wing doors, the conversation was over. Don't commit to anything until you've tried entrance/egress on Carl Denk's front hinge canopy. It should be easier, and might work for your wife.

<... I'm gonna try to get down to TN to meet Marc Z. on his monumental flight this year. I believe he's stopping at your place Jim... any room for extra visitors ...> Sure. Always room for one more. 3 or 4 could camp in the living room if they're really good friends. <... requires 5 hours dual time in a Cozy IV ...> If you can talk them into substituting Velocity time for Cozy IV you've had a standing invitation for over six months. Cozy has to be easier to fly. <... It isn't that easy to get a cozy ride ...> Don't exagerate, Joe. Didn't I hear Nat offer you a ride? How far is Phoenix from Taos? Maybe 6 or 7 hrs by car? Will your Cessna go that far? Flying a canard is not a big deal. I went to Sacramento to look at a Long-EZ, got maybe 30 min in the back seat (stick, no rudders or throttle, no forward visibility). I bought the airplane, loaded up my wife, jumped in and flew it home to Albany NY. These canards are as easy and honest an airplane as I have ever been in. <... lost his airplane (ironically to a failed Lycoming engine) ...> Did you ever see a final accident report on that?

All of the SQ2000s have IA retracts. But that's not a major market either. I would hazard a guess that after Phillip and Chrissi and a couple of SQ2000s get flying that a) hard data will dispel most of those "... only a 5-10 kt increase ..." rumors; b) we will see some Cozys that howl and JD will get a lot more business. This is the first place I heard that he only had the canard community as a market. I thought there were several other types. I'll have to check.

Kevin, I plan on IA retracts. There's good info on Phillip Johnson's site - http://www.maddyhome.com/canardpages/pages/plmjohnson/index.html He has good disertations on auto conversions, retractable main mounts and a couple of other "inflamatory topics". He is one of my main references along these lines - very articulate and well informed.

Killer patch!! Could you come up with one with my old call sign "Hostage Mike" on the rim? I'll look for a place that can make T-Shirt decals from a jpg. You do honey work! I'm gonna recommend you to my friends!!

VMO-2 11/68 - 11/69 (OV-10) Chu Lai 5/65 - 6/66 (A4) You ever check your "private messages"?

Ahhh I remember it well - the beautiful sign in the company grade head at Marble Mt - in beautiful gold leaf looking calligraphy in letters nearly a foot high: Fighting for Peace ... is like F**king for Chastity And on the opposite wall: Field Grade ... is a Character Disorder

What is this going to do to your parts count? What manner of trouble shooting issues will all this raise? What might be the failure modes of all these check valves and equalizing lines and all? Will the check valves ALL unseat EXACTLY THE SAME when presented with .02 psi head pressure to equalize? What if the equalizing line just doesn't equalize? What do you start looking at with all those parts and components? Wish I knew. <... and where the fuel ends up doesn't matter because both tanks self level ...> Gawd I hope so. All this fuss and bother it ought to do somethin'! Just what is not clear to me at this juncture. <... Will that work? ...> Damned if I know. I've described as best I can how tiny infulences and assymetries generated really BIG problems for me and some others. I hope it works for you better than it did for me. Forwarned is forarmed. Keep us posted on the results ....

Yup. All the stuff we aren't supposed to discuss in the ward room. Hey! Vets for peace! My guys! Took me a while to find them, but I got into it 5 or 6 years ago. Now we could have some GREAT fun with this bit!

<... I would imagine that my acting like a “Hippy” brought this up ...> Bullp**p! That has all the intellectual allure of saying that getting mugged was your fault because you were dressed too well for that neighborhood. The remark was polarizing, inflamatory, irrelevant to the subject under discussion and basically not very well thought out ~ and very much out of character for C-t-D. It wasn't about you, Joe. I served as well (and did a pretty credible job). At the end of the day, I feel I have a whole lot in common with the hippies and protesters .... after all, we were ALL betrayed by our leaders while doing the best we could under the circumstances. I'm for moving on .... After all, if we can elect a deserter to high office, we should be able to forgive a hippy his protesting ... (the Devil made me say that ...)

I think you missed several. The issue with MY Velocity (and a number of others) is that gravity flow to the sump doesn't work well. Like I start with full tanks and as I'm flying along (with ball centered) one tank gradually empties quicker than the other. Usually the Right tank empties first (leaving 8-10 gal in the Left tank). The next thing, the sump draws down to where the low fuel warning comes on (Left strake still has maybe 8 gal). Low sump light means I've got maybe 20 minutes of fuel left, but nearly an hour in the strake that won't transfer. I went to 3 or 4 forums, listened to all the ideas, heard from many folks who had similar problem and had or had not been able to solve it. I managed to take the edge off it, but it did NOT go away altogether. In the chocks, the strakes will eventually even out flowing from one to the other through the sump like a water level (may take a number of days). In flight, that will NEVER happen. You're right that it's a fuel feed issue. It does however, support the notion that a "T" (a gravity fed 7-gal sump is about a prominent a "T" as you are likely to find) does not assure you of symmetrical flow through both branches. <... Lets assume that the T will ...> Let's observe at this point that the math probably isn't being done and some details are falling through the cracks. <... one tank is near full the head pressure starts to kick in ... natural auto leveling action toward the top of the tank ...> My earlier post quantified your "head pressure". Five gal of fuel in a Cozy represents maybe an inch and a half of "head" which translates to about 0.03 psi "head pressure". <... we don't NEED to know what the fuel is doing ...> I'll regard that as an unfortunate choice of words. A nearly (but not quite) perfectly sealed gas cap will dump several times as much pressure as is represented by 5 gal of "head" - leaving you with "... several times five gallons of fuel ..." that you cannot understand why it won't gravity feed, even though your "T" is "... well below ..." the fuel level in the tank. <... If it all flows to one tank ... when it gets to the point where is starts to fill to the T it will all flow into the left, due to the head on the right ...> You'd think so. But it doesn't always happen that way. Lots of folks thrashing their brains out trying to figure out why that just doesn't happen the way it should. ... and so forth ... When we do the math, we discover how very small are the numbers we're dealing with and how it makes tiny influences and imperfections in the system that we don't notice and can't measure loom very LARGE.

Which is the greatest stuff there is for a working surface. Both of my workbenches are 3/8" plywood torsion boxes 8' x 4' x 1' and 4' x 4' x 1'. Won't warp or twist EVER, but have the minor irregularities one expects in plywood. I bondo a sheet of 3/4" MDF on top of the box for my working surface. MUCH better than particle board, stronger, harder, smoother, stiffer, etc. Bridges all the little low spots in the box structure and won't settle down into them. After it's all chewed up, I just flip it over.

<... run a thin open line under the fuselage, between the two tanks that balances the two systems like a water level ...> <... Barring long periods in uncordinated flight one will have equal fuel in each tank ...> More accurately, "... one would expect equal fuel ..." Nice theory, but along with coordinated flight it presupposes exactly identical fuel paths, exactly identical air leaks in filler caps, etc. My Velocity has wing tanks gravity feeding into a 5-gal sump from which fuel is drawn to the engine. Starting with 25-30 gal each side, at the end of the trip, left to their own devices, there is a 5 gal assymetry that I can't do much about. Like, I'm burning sump fuel, the right tank is empty and the left tank has 5-7 gal in it that won't gravity feed into the sump unless I fly along in a full rudder deflection crab for a while to pile the fuel up against the side of the fuselage. I've been fighting this ever since I got the airplane. Some days it's manageable, some days it isn't. As far as emptying strakes evenly is concerned, gravity is not nearly as reliable as you have been led to believe. If you do the math, you'll discover that a 5-gal assymetry can be caused by a very VERY small difference in pressure in the two tanks. Like about 0.03 - 0.05 psi. It doesn't take much of a filler cap leak to dump enough of the vent pressure to make a .03 psi difference between the tanks.

<... Or did I miss a fail mode ...> I think you did. You are presumably drawing from one tank and returning gawd knows where. How do you influence much less control where your return fuel goes? Late in the flight, been on top of WX most of the way, unanticipated headwinds, getting low on fuel. Which tank do you select? How do you keep the return fuel from going to the other one? How do you avoid crashing from fuel starvation 20 mi from home with 5 gal of gas in the unselected tank? Bottom line, you have no way ensuring that the fuel is where you need it. <... double throw valve for 50 bucks ...> Where you gonna get a duplex valve for $50? The cheapest one I've heard of was three or four times that.

He probably accidently pushed the wrong button. Actually, I'm encouraged. It is intuitive (and that counts most of the time) and I can't see any way AT ALL that it can make anything worse. I'm going to incorporate it on my EZ soon and Cozy later. BTW, it's [V]ortex [G]enerators upstream of the NACA, not Vortilons.

<... I hate the facet pump idea ...> You might want to revisit that notion. Examine it as rationally as possible with an eye toward risk analysis and management. <... use the pumps to select the source, and use the plans fuel valve for the RETURN instead of the FEED ...> Sounds like you have a pump for each tank. How do you access the fuel in the tank corresponding to a failed pump? The issues that are most important to me are: 1. Minimize the plumbing (particularly valves), and have NO plumbing in the cabin if it can be avoided. 2. Have a simple, easy way to assure myself that late in the flight all the fuel in the airplane is in the tank I am drawing from. 3. Main pumps (and filters) should be parallel and interchangable - in case of failure, flip one switch and I'm back in business. I am able to do ALL this with NO valves (electric or manual). Three toggle switches does the whole job (two main pumps and a facet pump). Fuel transfer from the Left tank via the Facet pump to Right (feed and return) tank can be easily automated to prevent the main failure mode (over filling feed tank). The only failue that renders fuel unavailable is failure of the transfer pump, and that would become evident while I still had plenty of fuel in the "draw" tank - plenty of time to divert. Absent moving parts, there are no prominent failure modes. Fuel management is very simple and easy (periodically run the transfer pump for a minute or two (which can be easily [semi] automated). KISS .... Jim S.

I haven't heard about any turboprop Cozys. Greg Richter is about to fly a turboJET Cozy. Next month or so I would guess. Maybe he'll take it to Sun-Fun:p