Kent Ashton

I wonder about the ability to rotate or suffer a dropped-in landing without hitting the prop. It depends on the position of the axles, the prop tip and the deck angle. I would like to see a full photo with the engine in place. --------- Off topic: My BD-5 sale pics you might find interesting. https://www.flickr.com/photos/85325364@N02/ Don't reply in this thread, plz

Seen today on FB. This builder posted extensively about his project on canardaviators.com and his builder page is https://sites.google.com/site/garagerocket/home?pli=1&fbclid=IwAR2JdQdecASSpW7lw0tpELhQ-lblWKIO-PqjsyDx01_hi89IhtJnODfWlnk Be sure to check his links to pictures at the bottom of that page. He says Yeah, "serious only" is right.

The North Carolina Craigslist Varieze (N45790 discussed above) marked down from $17K to $16K today. If he keeps advertising it without any cockpit and instrument pics, he'll be reducing it further, I expect. current ad: https://charlotte.craigslist.org/avo/d/garner-varieze/6818236430.html

I have been twice. The first time was good. The second time I went the airplanes were mostly closed up and people were out playing golf or something and it wasn't as much fun. If you hit the sweetspot when everybody is out on the ramp, it's good. I thought I would try Sun-n-fun this year now that they have new parking for experimentals away from the flightline. I just want to sit by my airplane and talk to people that are interested in building.

The question is moot because the FAA requires airports to accommodate work in hangars now (at federally-assisted airports), however in the summer, a closed hangar gets hot and working in it with the doors closed is just asking for trouble from airport management.

The $75K Long-ez here reduced to $72K today. (Barnstormers) https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/21972-sales-ive-seen/?do=findComment&comment=62940 Price includes matching hangar? 🙂

Putting in a Uavionix ADSB: I put the SkyFYX waas antenna under the instrument cover and the Echo UAT box nearby as shown, the ADSB antenna will be just behind the passenger backrest on the floor. Let you know how it works. I chose this one because it senses the pulse from my vanilla Garmin GTX 327 transponder and transmits a corresponding ADSB signal. It is supposed to sense the Garmin pulses with any connection but it can be wired to receive an RS232 data signal from the Garmin. I will use that. https://uavionix.com Yeah my wiring looks a little sloppy. It's hard to keep wiring neat especially since I had to wire a lot of stuff before I installed a removable instrument cover. The tray below the Echo unit is homemade for an AM/FM radio.

A word on why I dropped my EAA membership: When the Concord-Regional Airport booted me off the airport years ago, I asked the Government Affairs folks at EAA to support me by writing to the FAA. I was the President of my Chapter at the time; all I wanted to do was simply tinker on my Cozy in my hangar. For complaining about the airport's prohibition under 14 CFR §16, the airport evicted me and admitted quite brazenly that they evicted me because I exercised my First Amendment right to complain ("petition the government"). I expected EAA to support me. After all, the airport also said "no work of any kind in T-hangars", "no experimental Phase I testing on this airport", and a bunch of other stuff obnoxious to homebuilders. EAA wouldn't even write a letter; so I dropped my membership. It has been hard because I really enjoyed EAA but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. I still do the occasional Tech Counselor visit and send in the forms because it pleases me to do that and I want to support homebuilders. EAA has never sent the forms back even though I am not a member anymore. Bureaucracy! Then there is the EAA requirement to prove I'm not a pedophile; an additional reason why I never rejoined EAA. I'm amazed that pilots will submit to that in order to be acceptable to EAA for flying Young Eagles. Does EAA think we are going to feel the girls up during the taxi-back, or begin "grooming" with a friendly flight? How often has that happened? Yet good people--men mostly--will submit to this exam to do something that is good for kids and aviation. If we wanted to molest children, there are better venues than in your Long-ez at 5000' Lately, my local chapter has started a Facebook page--also at the urging of EAA. It does not bother EAA that lyin' Mark Zuckerberg, along with Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat have turned a nation into porn-watching zombies that feel free to tell anyone, anywhere, anytime, to f--- off. Most of FB is drivel but--thank goodness--drivel that sinks to the bottom of the newsfeed and is never seen again. Yes, I had a FB placeholder page for a while but now I'm stickin' it to the MAN! OK nurse, I'm ready now.

I like them because they are very much like flying a fighter although less maneuverable: comfortable seating position, good speed, interesting looking, can be built by one person working alone and modified pretty easily. The downside is that the LEZ plans are somewhat dated, they need a hard-surface runway, you can't carry much in an EZ without travel adding pods, and there are not as many around as the Vans airplanes; a Vans owner can go to a Vans event every weekend. Oh yeah, and the sanding. 😞 If it wasn't for the sanding, I would probably be working on another one.

Hey dumbass, it's "aisle", not "isle"

I see that the Langford Defiant we saw a year ago is back on B-stormers, still at $27K. https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/21972-sales-ive-seen/?do=findComment&comment=61356 He is obviously in no hurry to sell. Maybe waiting for an estate sale. 🙂 This reminds me of my neighbor, a nice guy who has a $25,000 custom Harley chopper in his garage that he can't ride due to back problems. It's been there about 18 years. If he had sold it 18 years ago for $20K and earned modest 3% on the money, he'd have $34,048 today instead of an out-of-style bike worth maybe $10K. If he could earn 8% on $20K, he'd have $39960. This is easy to compute using a calculator with an X-to-the-Y-power function. To figure 3% interest over 18 years, plug in 1.03, X-to-the-Y, 18 which gives 1.702 times the sale price of $20,000 = $34048. It works in reverse with the same key using the "shift" function on most calculators. I hope I am not insulting anyone's intelligence--I am barely math-literate myself-- but I'm sure a lot of people do not think about the time-value of money or know how to calculate it. If Mr. Langford had sold his Defiant for $27K a year ago (it was listed at $28K), and put his money in a 3% savings account he would have $27810 today. If it takes him 5 years to sell at $27K, he could have had $31300 less taxes, While I am veering way off the topic, I will mention BankRate.com which I heard about from Clark Howard's podcast (Clark.com). I had money in a local bank account for way too long earning .03% and moved it to a 2.5% online bank account from the BankRate site. Still paltry but a big improvement. Gonna buy me a defiant some day!

There are probably a lot of Cozy and Long-ez builder/owners in Minnesota you could contact. A few are on this site but a search in members does not show them. You could join the Central States Association or David Orr's EZ Squadron, which publish member lists. Join the Cozybuilders google group or the Canard-aviators yahoo group and introduce yourself and someone will usually invite you to come take a look. Both airplanes are similar to build. There is lots of web information and blogs on building Long-ezs and Cozys. Google and Google images will lead you to a lot of them. Here are a couple http://www.aryjglantz.com/p/blog-page.html http://longezproject.blogspot.com/p/blog-by-topic.html Go A.F.!

Put 'em on Barnstormers. You can probably get at least $400 if you have the blueprints and an ad there is about $25. People want these plans. If they don't come with blueprints, the prints can be downloaded here in the Open-ez topic. If you decide not to do that, PM me where to send a paypal payment.

Yes a prebuy is a good thing but i’d say most of the projects on my Sales thread i could see buying. I’d want to see more pics, of course and some i would want to visit and have a closer look but most look decent. Anyway, we are talking hypotheticals. Show me a project and I’ll tell you if I’d buy it.

Connectors: I needed some simple connectors to connect ADSB wires behind the instrument panel. Like all homebuilders, I have a box of didn't work/didn't use/got-from-a-flea market connecters I might be able to use. I had some of these brown jobbies (pic) I had left-over from a Subaru project but What are they? and What pins do they use? Several hours and two Digikey orders later, I think I have what I need. The brown connectors are TEConnectivity/AMP Universal Mate-n-Lok. They have all kinds in their catalog and the first time, I ordered pins for AWG 30 wire--wrong. They have simple locking latches that I like--a bit easier to take apart than Fast-On tabs. https://www.te.com/usa-en/search.html?q=universal%2Bmate&type=information&samples=N&instock=N I could have used Molex; they have a lot of options but use differently-shaped pins in three sizes. I made myself a little note so I can save brain cells. They are not expensive connectors but if you know what you need, you might find them at the Subaru isle of a Pull-Apart yard. My routine is often to find what I need from Google images, use that to find the part number in a catalog, put the part number into Digikey's search box and look at a drawing or spec sheet. BTW, when I said above that my cockpit is comfy down to 0F, I meant to say 0C.

When you have seen a few under construction, good workmanship is self-evident. You can see good work on the web. Sometimes it is too good and builders are being way too concerned with CAD and milimeter-perfection. There is nothing very critical at the bathtub stage—almost any project at that stage wiil be fine. I see a lot of wings and canards that look well-built, too. You will generally get all the builder’s labor for free and sometime a 50% discount on the materials. If I see something questionable in the Sales thread, I usually discuss it. Most builders are very conscientous and intend to build a nice airplane but life gets in the way. 😞.

Seen on the cozybuilders mail list. An Aerocad Cozy

Here is another sad story of a guy who croaked before he finished (or even started on) his Velocity project. Grieving wife trying to unload it. It looks like a decent deal--about half price. Bonus: Includes "Moldless Composite Construction" book! https://atlanta.craigslist.org/nat/avo/d/live-oak-velocity-173-rg-elite-aircraft/6823193233.html Apparently the Cozy project in Atlanta discussed above sold. No longer listed BTW, here is a way to search in Craigslist. Say you want to search in aviation or for a BMW bike. On Craigslist.org for your area select "Aviation" or start a search in "For Sale" for "BMW motorcycle" , then change the city to any city you want. The search will switch to that city. I have also used Google to search CL by searching for "site:craigslist.org "BD-5" " That brought up this little gem, a prime candidate for the PBS TJ100 jet engine. No goofy kids have screwed it up in their shed and parked it under a tarp for the past 48 years. https://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/avo/d/san-diego-vtg-70-bede-aviation-bd-5/6817160832.html (Don't bite on that last one without PM-ing me. It is a short wing kit and the plans book looks very thin)

Yes, very interesting but I am surprised that the same weight of tape in both samples used 16% more epoxy in the Frence tapes. Cross threads in the French tapes might be making more voids that fill with epoxy. Cutting the weight of French tapes by 16% results in 4.62 layers. I'd be interested to see if 4.5 to 5 layers of the French tape gives a similar weight and stiffness as the old tapes. (picture irrelevant but I couldn't remove it.)

Nice looking airplane. We don't see many Q-200/Quickie posts on this site in the past few years but there is this site http://www.quickheads.com with a forum. The Canard-Aviators group probably has Q-200 members, too. You can probably find info here using the search function. Anyway, don't let that stop you from posting ideas and questions here. Hope it works out well for you.

Two Variezes today, N88ED, no pics. https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/NNum_results.aspx?NNumbertxt=88ED VARIEZE • $18,000 • AVAILABLE FOR SALE • Well built. O-200, glass cockpit, empty wt 640lbs, night eqp, oil filter, approx 1760ttaf. OBO • Contact Jeff Martin, Owner - located Fayetteville, GA USA • Telephone: 3107224555 • Posted February 13, 2019 and this one not far from me on Craigslist https://charlotte.craigslist.org/avo/d/garner-varieze/6818236430.html https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=45790 N45790 Couple of pics in the ad. Seller wants $17,000. says: Air brake, Continental C-90, Hand crank nose wheel, Trims out nicely in flight, I have installed a light weight starter, Call or text No voicemails

Post a pic of your lower cowl plz. I can’t visualize how that would work. Most of the SQs i see in google images seem to have a standard updraft into a plenum, then up through the bottom of the fins and out.

Do you use updraft cooling? If so your flexible baffles are pointing in the wrong direction.

Yep, selling my BD-5 project. I bought one of the first kits in about 1971 as a Lieutenant. Worked on the wings and realized I needed more shop than I had at that time and sold it. Just before retirement another pilot had this unstarted kit and I heard the siren call again. Over time, I came to realize that the prop version was not a very good idea however jet engines have come down in price. It could easily be finished as a jet but not by me. I am not sure my build quality justifies the cost. Well, water under the bridge. The second pic is the nose I rebuilt recently; the original one was off center. It will give you an idea of what it's like to build one of those things. All the parts you see had to be built from plans except the preformed skins and the NG strut. It was a great airplane for learning metal-working but not as easy as Jim Bede let on. Other pics here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/85325364@N02/ BD-5 • MAKE OFFER • BD-5B (long wings) on the gear with Kauth redrive (unobtanium), Riblett wings, FULL plans, newsletters, PCNs, hardware, jigs, pilot manual builder pics and supporting documents. Contact me for a full description and pictures. I will advertise here for a couple of months and take the best offer. • Contact Kent J. Ashton, Owner - located Concord, NC USA • Telephone: 704-784-1874 • Posted February 12, 2019

Yeah, if you can make your own metal parts, that’ll help. The only ones I could not make were the canard offset actuator hinges. I could not get the 1/4” (or 3/16”?) hole drilled correctly for the long pin. Not sure what the secret is to that. now that I think about it, i wonder if the Cozy centerspar jig can be used to build a spar for an EZ? I suspect the EZ spar is a little smaller in thickness and shorter, of course, but likely the same geometry. The Cozy jig could probably be reused.