Kent Ashton

Greetings. I have a friend in Vannes (Monterblanc) just about finished rebuilding his Cozy Mk IV. There seems to be a lot of canard activity nearby. I will send you his email address. I used to own a Cozy III. I hope you are not a big person because it was designed by and for Nat Puffer and his wife who were pretty small people. I used to fly mine without any cushions to get more hip room. I was about 100 kg. You can us short removable armrests that will help there. You should also join the Cozybuilders Google Group and there are a couple of Facebook groups for the Cozy and the Rutan airplanes. There are many sources of information on the net. Enjoy your project.

A lot of folks recommend Falcon Insurance in Kerrville, TX https://falconinsurance.com/ I've been insured through them for many years. I do not have hull and I wouldn't have liability except that my airport requires it. About $550 per year for liability on a Cozy. Re: Hull Ins.. I look at it this way: I am unlikely to have a crash that totally destroys the airplane (fingers crossed). Anything less and I can probably repair it myself. My friend totally ripped the nose off his Cozy forward of the canard and he rebuilt it himself with no prior experience. Any shop that _could_ rebuild it is going to cost you an arm and a leg. As the builder of mine, I know the airplane pretty well and respond to any unusual things with the engine. As a buyer, you should be a little cautious and ask a lot of questions until you get really familiar with the engine and operation. Engine and brakes--those are key items to maintain. Did you buy one of the "Sales I've seen" listings?

This today. Yup, nice workmanship, lots of extras, and an engine! Cheap! More pics in the ad

Just talking to my friend about brakes. For the Cozy, Nat Puffer specified Heavy Duty Cleveland brakes, kit 199-152 (pic). I had them for a about 400 hours and switched to Matco W51LT models. Here is a good article on brakes https://infinityaerospace.com/brake-kinetic-energy-requirements/ From the article above, the Clevelands tolerate 192,000 ft/lbs of kinetic energy per brake. The Matcos tolerate 329,900 ft/lbs. Grove makes a brake that tolerates up to 279,000 ft/lbs. https://groveaircraft.com/5series.html I'm not an engineer but the amount of kinetic energy the brake can absorb determines how soon it fades. In addition to avoiding brake overheating and fading, you want to have the stopping power to skid the wheels, if needed. My Clevelands were OK but did not offer enough clamping force that I could lock up the tire. I never used them to the fade point but I never pushed them, either. Matcos are bit harder to maintain and service but I can lock up the tire if needed. Maybe the Groves would be a good intermediate option. It appears they can be serviced like Clevelands which are pretty easy to service. The gent who owns Infinity was very sick a few years ago and I am not sure he is still in business but he had the best prices on Matcos. I flush my brake fluid every two years. The fluid absorbs moisture and if it gets too old the moisture can boil in the hot caliper and you lose your brakes. My friend learned that the hard way.

Today. The green paint looks familiar. A Dave Hanson project airplane? two pics below. N64LZ Then one a bit cheaper. N101AN. Too bad they didn't have the strength to push it out in the sun for some decent pics. two below

One time, USAir gave our Chapter cases of a super-expensive aircraft paint that had expired. I grabbed a four gallon case and used it on a bunch of stuff over the years but on my last auto paint job, I had noticed it developed crystals in the paint that you could feel in the finished paint. I used it maybe 10 years past the expiration date so I got a lot of use out of it. Anyway, I ran across this site selling a similar surplus primer. If I were painting an airplane, I would try it. I suspect it will be good for many years beyond the expiration and you will probably sand the primer anyway. Paint of any kind is expensive these days! This offer is $50 for 4 gallons. I suspect it was $400+ new. https://www.repurposedmaterialsinc.com/paint/aerospace-paint-akzonobel-sandable-white/ https://johnsonsupplyco.com/product/464-3-1-epoxy-primer-surfacer/

Saw this good idea from Andrew Anunson for mounting an oil cooler. He says he will probably change the aluminum straps to steel but aluminum is probably OK. From experience, these types of installation need a small bump or deflector on the cowl outside and ahead of the cooler to create a bit of low pressure. However, I bet he will need some sort of device to block off the airflow in cold weather. There is one in this thread.

B-stormers: This looks very repairable but it is hard to value a damaged airplane. No seller price, either. The crash was discussed in the Cozybuilder's forum a year or two ago. I would "insult" the seller with a low bid and go from there. 🙂 More pics in the ad

One of the best guys I've listened to regarding cholesterol is Professor Ken Sikaris, a pathologist at a big lab in Australia that does 15,000 tests a week(?) and he really knows his blood work. Most people know that a person is diabetic at an HBA1c >6.5 but the risk of coronary artery disease starts between 5.5-6.5. HbA1c is how much sugar has attached to your hemoglobin. Hemoglobin cells are replaced every 3 months so it's a history of your blood sugar. Mine was 5.6 recently. The docs generally do not test for HbA1c unless they suspect you're diabetic but trouble starts way below the 6.5 diabetes threshold. Then he relies a lot on triglycerides. Trigs measure the amount of fat being transported in the blood by cholesterol. Fats are good, cholesterol is good but high Trigs show the fat is not being metabolized properly. The interesting thing is that high Trigs indicate you probably have a lot of small, dense LDL. sdLDL is normal LDL which has been over-used. sdLDL is not recognized by the liver and recycled. It hangs around in the blood where it leaks into the arterial lining, macrophages engulf it, and plaques build up. If your Trigs are less than about 88 mg/dl (1 mmol/L) you don't have much sdLDL, Sikaris says. My Trigs have been in the 130 range but came down to 103 in my last test. I have decided not to worry worry about LP(a) or cholesterol fractionation tests. BTW, I booked a cholesterol panel and HbA1c test online at a Labcorp near me. $98 for the two tests which includes a doctor's order. I was stupid about this stuff before, and it cost me two heart attacks. Sikaris "Does LCHF improve your blood tests?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXkE8_NdAyQ "Blood tests to assess your cardiovascular risk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BFRi-nH1v8 "Cholesterol - When to worry" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyzPEii-wo0 Note: There are many sites for converting Australian mmol/L to U.S. mg/dl but the conversion factor is different for trigs than for total cho, HDL and LDL.

talking to my friend about a loose nose wheel. I have found that the aluminum spacers which hold the bearings tend to wear where they press against the tapered bearing (pic). I have made some spacers out of steel in the past which wear better but the bearings might be tightened up by shaving a bit of metal off the spacers where they meet in the middle. If they seem too tight, add a thin shim between the spacers. Another problem was his CHT indications. CHTs are pretty simple. If you remove one wire-pair for a cylinder at the gauge, it should not show "OL" or open line between the two wire. That would be a break in the wire-pair. CHTs are either J- or K-curve (pic), usually J-curve for a CHT (pic). (H/T http://thesensorconnection.com/blogs/neillm I pulled this J-curve chart from the same source (pic 3). On a 25C day the voltage should be -1.239 millivolts. Fun, huh. 🙂

E-Racer project on B-stormers first listed at $15K, then $7.8K, reduced to $7.3K today. Probably would have sold it if wasn't such a rare build. The professionally-build cowls, canard, strakes, winglets and wings look nice. They are probably worth that to a Long-ez builder. Retracts, canopy, plans could be sold, I expect History: https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/21972-sales-ive-seen/?do=findComment&comment=82873

Today's Barnstormers

Just looking at this Piper Cherokee crash http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2022/05/aircraft-structural-failure-piper-pa-28.html Airplane appears to have been bought in October, crashed the next May. Pilot: So the 38 hr PIC pilot had barely gotten used to the airplane. loaded it up with his three friends, then stooged around at 100 knots flying steep turns to look at a farm on the ground, it appears. Lets the nose fall, exceeds VNE and pulls the airplane apart trying to recover. Does the pilot syllabus still call for turns-around-a-point? No matter, even that sort of practice probably did not prepare him for this maneuver. It is easy when looking at stuff on the ground and yucking it up with buddies to forget about the fuselage angle in relation to the horizon. Pilot allows the nose to drop in the steep-banked turn. The aircraft is slow but still does not give any stall warning because there is less G being required than in a level turn. Pilot notices, too late, that he has let the maneuver go to hell and tries to pull out. A related situation often occurs when a pilot makes a high-speed low pass followed by a steep climb. It is very impressive to watch but at the top, pilot may realize that his speed has fallen well below level-flight stall speed but his nose is still 20-30 degrees high. This calls for a very ginger wing-over recovery without putting any G on the airplane--and coordinated. Poorly done, a stall-spin can result close to the ground. When stooging around close to the ground, it is important to always monitor the fuselage angle in relation to the horizon and not let it get too extreme.

Some random thoughts: I get the impression you are only ground-running this engine. That will only tell you so much. If the engine starts normally in 2-3 blades, has good oil pressure, idles smoothly, accelerates smoothly, you lean it as much as possible on the ground and after it warms up a bit it appears to pass the "idle mixture check", then there can't be much wrong with it. At Arkansas spring temperatures _in idle_, it will warm up slowly--I'm guessing maybe 10 minutes to reach 300-325 degrees. It was an 1800 hour engine, right, so we know it probably ran OK and you're not seeing problems from a break-in. An older engine might get a sticking exhaust valve and display "morning sickness" until it warms up, then appear to run normally. Your compressions are good(?) but even a low compression engine should run smoothly. There is not much point is ground-running beyond that unless you're making adjustments to idle mixture. A miss-timed engine (too advanced) can run hotter than a properly timed engine but you are only complaining about one cylinder. I don't think the airbox is your problem but you could run the engine without the air box--even fly without it for a while. That mesh is only keeping squirrels out of the engine 🙂 A diffuser might help but the improvement can be marginal, so I wouldn't worry about one until you can fly it. An intake air leak might be noticed during a compression check. I saw a video where I think they backed the prop up until the intake valve began to open and the pop as the compression was suddently released into the intake was seen as a sudden leak at the the intake piping. The intake pipes are swaged into the sump. I have also read about squirting propane around the intake swages. If they are loose, the rpm will rise as the propane is sucked in. It is often true that in flight, #3 and #4 run hotter by say, 25 degrees (or so) because plenum air piles up against the aft bottom baffle and cools #1 and #2 well but until you fly, you can't tell. The angle of your airbox and SCAT might be degrading the flow up to #4 but you wouldn't see that when ground-running. You might take a look at what this guy did https://alongwayroundtheworld.com/category/non-build-mods/ram-air-box-for-jze/

This doesn't sound like an airbox problem. Restricted carburetor airflow would cause rich (cooler) running or less power output and thus lower cylinder temperature. It sounds more like a gauge problem. It could possibly be lean running from excess air like with an intake air leak but I would think that if your other cylinders are normal, it would be hard to get a huge difference in one cylinder, even from an intake leak. Maybe you are breaking-in a cylinder which might run a little hotter but you shouldn't let it get more than about 300-350 for a ground break-in. I would test the CHT indications dipping the sender into a tin can with an inch of oil heated with a propane torch and measuring the oil temp with a candy thermometer. Compare a couple of cylinders. Also consider that at idle, an engine is not making much power and not rejecting so much heat so it is harder to get temperatures that high. However, 450 is very high and parts of a cylinder at idle airflow can develop hot spots and be even hotter. Lycoming says for best engine life, keep the temps below 400. At 425 on the ground, I am shutting it down to cool off.

Craigslist today https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/avo/d/carlsbad-rutan-designed-long-ez/7476114460.html

Seen today. Project in Cle Elum, Washington. No price stated

Today: and this one, N511EZ. Nice looking airplane (pics)

Selling my extra Lightspeed Plasma (original version). I upgraded to Plasma IIIs. It would work well paired with a magneto, paired with another Plasma, or kept as a spare. It comes with the manual and wiring diagrams. To use this Plasma, you would need Lightspeed's Hall Effect trigger or either of Lightspeed crank-sensor systems like the Mini-Sensor or the green ring. This Plasma is marked "Hall Effect" but per confirmation from Lightspeed, it works with any of the three trigger systems. To complete the installation you would need two coils, two RG-400 cables with female BNC connectors, some twisted-pair wire, a 25-pin D-sub and crimp pins, quality plug wires and 18mm auto plugs (Autolite 386, for example) or 14mm Denso/NGK plugs with inserts. The mag-hole Hall Effect sensor is your easiest option. Klaus checked it last Fall and says it works perfectly. In operation, these are indistinguishable from the latest model Plasmas. The newer models have some timing-control and monitor options which are not required unless you feel you need to monitor the timing, otherwise they are all good ignitions, easy to setup and time and offer noticeably better cruise performance than a mag. With the Hall Effect trigger, timing is a matter of setting the engine on TDC and rotating the sensor until a green light comes on. You're timed. See www.lightspeed-aero.com PM me if interested

I wouldn't think you would learn too much from an adjustable pitch prop. See the chart below. When I read about a prop in use, I added it to the chart and used the figures to build my own prop although it is probably easier to specify the engine to one of the established prop-builders and they will give you a good prop. The first prop I built worked great on a 160hp O-320 (a 65" Dia X 79" pitch) and the second one for an O-360 would have worked great if I'd taken a little more care in building it. Happy to send you the airfoil files if you want to try one but it takes an apparatus to clamp up the boards and a vertical mill to drill the prop holes squarely. After that it's just a lot of cutting, carving, and comparing. In the PDF, "C at 75%" is calculated circumference at the 75% blade station. "Angle degrees" is the chord angle but it is often a guess because prop builders quote the chord angle in different ways PropCompare2.pdf

What sort of lights? Wingtip, cockpit, landing? For wingtip lights, the Long-ez has a hole through the wing for running wires. Not sure if one is there in a Varieze. If not you might sharpen the end of a long piece of EMT (electrical metallic tubing) and drill a hole down the wing. Or run wires along the aileron cutouts. Or a combination of things. The easy way to have cockpit lights is to buy a couple of cheap LED light arrays and fix them so they shine on the panel. Dim them with a PWM from Ebay. There are hundreds of those sort of LEDs. For example this (pic) is a little square array I got for a buck or two. They come in all sorts of strips and will light up a cockpit or panel. They are so cheap they are not worth advertising. Landing lights are not absolutely required and they really do not help much for landing--mostly useful for taxi. You could carry a strong LED torch that plugs into a cigarette lighter or embed some LEDs in the nose or wing leading edge.

Today's B-stormers: No pics. N35PC http://www.aviationdb.com/Aviation/Aircraft/3/N35PC.shtm

The Manteo NC EZ drone(?) ad updated today on Barnstormers. Same price ($5K) but I think there are a few added pics. Looks like something could be done with this one. Pic below

Seen today. Nice repair job on the fuselage. The original finish appears to be the black UV-blocking primer that was recommended in the early days--that stuff did not stick well but is easy to sand off (in my experience). Some earlier intel here https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/21972-sales-ive-seen/?do=findComment&comment=66835

This EZ today on Ebay. Buyers must beg for details. Located at KLCI--yeah, doesn't everybody have every airport identifier memorized? Jeesh!. (The airport is Laconia, NH)