Kent Ashton

This EZ- N787EZ-- relisted today on Ebay (pic). Was $117,000 in 2018 here, https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/21972-sales-ive-seen/?do=findComment&comment=62642 buy it now at [cough] $89K. O-235! His ballast must be gold bars. Ebay Item # 334538608538 However, I was just comparing the prices of stuff in the Spruce catalog. A gallon of MGS285 resin went from $157-->$278. EZ-Poxy $109-->$172. Oddly enough, the cost of BID (RA7725) has gone down 30 cents but Spruce shows "no stock". So I guess we have to recalibrate our aircraft prices. A $75K Long-EZ does not sound so bad.

Saw this pic of a battery mount on the centerspar. Imagine what could happen if this airplane runs off into a ditch or some other sudden stoppage. Heads up!

Above: I see that Infinity is selling the retracts for $6K. http://www.infinityaerospace.com/infgear.htm Sounds like the seller is trying to get all his money back on the retracts then $12K more for the tub, canard, canopy and parts. Not too far off the mark, I would say, but I'd make an offer well below <$12K and let him keep the retracts. His comment about the plans is suspicious: Sounds like he did not own a full set of plans but who knows? Also, it is fishy to me when the seller shows a picture of somebody else's flying airplane. Those headrests look huge! But it comes with lead ballast! 🙂

A friend got me some discarded cylinders to make torque plates. This one (pic) was pretty dramatic. Another cylinder had a red mark inside around the spark plug hole as if a dye-penetrant had shown a crack but I could not see one there. It was quick work to cut the bases off versus the day-and-a-half it took me to make a torque plate from scratch. They are about $37-$49. If you have not read Mike Busch's cautions about cylinder work, look them up on Youtube. Torque plates keep the bearings from shifting when cylinders are removed. Did you know that in a Lycoming cylinder heads are screwed onto the barrels? That is right where the crack is--the top of the barrel.

Another on the Cozy list today: H Gang. After a lot of thought, I have decided to sell my Cozy III project. It is really far along, attached is a list of things that need to be done by Chapter. I have a gazillion pictures, obviously way too many to show here. I am going to try to download a bunch of them in a Drop Box folder. There are two parts of the completion that require a little more effort and thought than most of the rest of the completion. One is the putting on the Main Gear Attach Brackets Outboard Support pieces if you so choose to use, along with finishing the Main Gear Fairing covering the Main Gear Access Hole. Second is installing the Nose Retract mechanism of choice. Currently there is a Brock Retract Mechanism in place. The plane needs an engine and instruments (Electrical). I am asking $15,000.00, picking up the project and transporting is on the buyer. For the price, this is a must see to believe project. Somebody looking to get a project they can finish quickly this may be the answer. My reasoning for the Cozy III over the Cozy IV was: side by side seating and being able to pack my wife’s stuff in the back when we travel, secondly economy of travel. Any questions, please call. Sincerely, Mike Scovel S/E Michigan [three one three) six zero eight - seven two zero seven] EZdriver at sbcglobal dot net Cozy III Progress Chart (1).docx

Seen on the Cozy list

You don't really need a serial number. The FAA will let you use whatever number you want when you register your airplane. However, it should have been written on your builder's manual and a license page. Normally you signed the license page and returned it to Nat and that was your permission to build but that was only between you and Nat. Last I heard, Nat is in a nursing home somewhere but I have not heard anything new lately. Aircraft Spruce owns the rights now. They might have a list but frankly, I wouldn't worry about it.

Seen the movie "The High and the MIghty"? What a great aviation flick, availabe on Youtube. I get choked up every time John Wayne nurses that DC-4 into San Francisco.

The spring clamps seem to work well on my Subaru. I was thinking I would go to my local Pull-A-Part and collect some. McMaster sells them https://www.mcmaster.com/spring-clamps/constant-tension-spring-band-clamps-for-firm-hose-and-tube/ With the standard hose clamps, it is easy to get them too tight and cut the rubber or too loose and they leak. Anyway I will give them a try. ----------------- Tip: don't throw away old cylinders. They are good for making cylinder torque plates for when you want to remove a couple cylinders or more to work on them. Mike Busch talks about being very careful not to change the torque on the cylinder hold-down bolt if you want to avoid shifting the main bearings or cam. This guy in Seattle has old cylinders for $20 but is is probably too expensive to ship them to N.C. https://seattle.craigslist.org/skc/avo/d/seattle-used-aircraft-cylinders/7514291987.html However if some local builder wants to pay half the shipping (hint, hint) maybe I will order a couple and cut them up.

Fshort said "How could this not leak?" What a mess! But it reminds me of a tip I saw to use spring-style hose clamps on the rubber oil drain-back tubes on a Lycoming. The spring-clamps will maintain tension as the tubes heat-cycle. I am planning to do that next time I do some cylinder work. Just bought a tool for them:

I drilled and tapped it with the gear off the strut. I think it was an NPT (tapered) thread. You can lube it with the gear down. It does not take much grease. BTW, I am not using that microswitch setup. Had a better idea. 🙂

This one in the UK: Quite a good-looking build for about $7800US. More pics in the ad https://afors.com/aircraftView/55192/Rutan-LongEz-90-completed-aircraft Seller posts on canard-aviators group.

Sad to see that CanardCommunity.com has disappeared from the web (pic). This follows CanardAviation.com a few years ago. Both were good resources for researching canard questions. I guess this one will disappear one day but fear not, faithful fans, "Kent's Long-ez project" is archived at the Wayback Machine for eternity or until the big Russian microwave pulse zeros-out all the bits and bytes 🙂 . https://web.archive.org/web/20211019173724/https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/18661-kents-long-ez-project/

The bright green EZ originally discussed at $49K here https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/21972-sales-ive-seen/?do=findComment&comment=83833 reduced to $47K today. Seller getting "serious only". 🙂

This one just relisted on B-stormers. First seen listed at $9,800 a few weeks ago where seller said "no low balls." Low-ballers apparently made their point. 🙂 https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/21972-sales-ive-seen/?do=findComment&comment=84806 Could be OK but needs a lot of spiffing. Wings look mostly OK. One minor ding at the winglet. Probably a fair price but a lot of work there.

Here's how I have made fuel sight gauges (not "site" gauges, for goodness sake!). The bubble is PETG and the backing plate is Lexan [polycarbonate] from a sign shop. Ask for scraps. The forms are made from 3/4" plywood and a 3/4" dowel. Aluminum tape is used to give a smooth bubble. I used some cloth as shown but it left an imprint. The imprint did not hurt but a felt cloth would likely be better. Heat your oven on BAKE to 280-320F and heat up the PETG on a clean cookie sheet. Keep checking a corner to see when it gets flexible. If you get it too hot it will form bubbles and be unusable. When flexible, whip it off the cookie sheet with pliers, flop it on the male form, apply the female form and stand on them for 30 secs or so. Make a float out of the dense urethane used to mount the aileron brackets or some sort of urethane. You can buy them from Vance Atkinson of slightly higher quality but what fun is that? Here is a pic installed in my EZ project. To mount them, roughen all surfaces. Mount the white backing plate to the inside fuselage with wet flox. After cure, drill holes top and bottom into the tank. The bottom holes are drilled so they are near the bottom of the tank surface and the bottom of the gauge bubble but not so low as to be covered by the wet flox that is used next to hold the bubble. Use a bit or grease to hold the float in the middle of the bubble and a small bit of grease in the lower hole to prevent flox from blocking it. Now mount the bubble with wet flox. It should squeeze out but not cover the lower hole. If it does, just remove the bubble and do-over. After cure, tape over the bubble for protection and apply 2 BID around the edges.

Today: Too rich for my blood.

This EZ seen back in April at $53,500 relisted at $49,500. April ad: https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/21972-sales-ive-seen/?do=findComment&comment=82886 Might be a fair price with the new engine

Seen on our FB friends: What would you do with this prop (pics)?. Appears it has sat a while outdoors and rotted some of the wood. Dumb, because a prop cover is easy to make. Anyway, the smaller dings can be repaired with micro. No telling what the prop will look like when removed but I think I would remove the rotten wood and build up the area with flox or flox and a wedge of new wood if it was no more than what is seen in the pics. As long as there is plenty of wood left to clamp the prop between the flange and the [other piece, the name of which eludes my elderly mind at the moment], I think it would be OK. I would guess there is plenty of wood left in the hub to clamp it properly and resist any loosening or failure. It would probably change the balance but it can be rebalanced. Also, before I would throw away a $2000 prop I would think about glassing it, as discussed before in this thread. I doubt any professional prop builder is going to yellow-tag a prop like this so you gotta decide for yourself. Looks like maybe a Great American prop to me. Good props but no longer in business.

One of the dumbest things I have heard lately from FB folks talking about Cozys and forward CG, i.e., adding weight at the centerspar to offset a forward CG (pic) and getting two "thumbs up". The airplane is already heavier with two people in front, then you add another 20-40? pounds of unneeded weight? The centerspar is only inches aft of the aircraft center of gravity so there is very little effect. The only rationale I can see for it is that you want to drop off a pax and move the ballast up front for the next solo flight. However, I have flown my Cozy solo with no ballast but I was careful not to over-rotate on takeoff, not to get slower than my usual final approach speed, and to land a bit faster than normal, trying, of course, not to get so slow as to induce a wing stall (and I weighed 225 lbs at the time). If you ever think you might try that, you might check that you have enough elevator trim to counteract the lighter nose. Man, that airplane was responsive! Forward CG in a canard airplane is more of a suggested limit. The aircraft will fly with a CG well-forward of that recommended but it will take longer to rotate and probably need to land land a bit faster than you are used to because it will lose canard effectiveness earlier. I flew my Cozy III with 450# in the front seat a couple of times which put it well-forward of Nat's recommended limit (350?) . I did not do like to do that routinely because I was afraid I would land faster in an off-airport landing situation and the energy to dissipate in the crash is the velocity squared.

I suspect a lot of folks consider the Vari and EZ to be dead designs. Think about taking a sign to display with your airplane saying "You can [still] build this airplane. Ask me how." I think there is going to be increased interest in fast, thrifty airplanes like the Vari that can be built from scratch in a couple of years. 🙂

It appeared to be taped into place. I couldn't tell if it straddled the strake-wing joint. Haven't heard about any new short wing span? Tell us more. His wings appeared normal length.

Today: Seems a little pricey but with every RV going for the same or more, maybe not.

I noticed that Klaus had an interesting cuff taped to this wing/strake joint. Did not have a chance to ask him about it. Also, with his carbon-fiber (covered?) prop he had extended the wood core at the inboard leading edge to make a wider blade and shaved off the trailing edge. The blade thickness at the flanges appeared to be standard.

Observations from Oshkosh: Lower turnout than I've seen in the past. My hall in the non-A/C dorms only had two rooms occupied. Wx was beautiful, cool and clear the two days I was there. EZ and Cozy turnout was OK but the general homebuilt parking down in front was only about 3/5ths full. LOTs of RVs with beautiful paint jobs--sort of boring, though. Lots of people eyeing the new RV-15 prototype. I did not see as many of the homebuilt equipment/engines/kits sellers as before. For example, Bede had a BD-4 frame but did not come with any of their other designs. Alturair, which has faithfully appeared for years and years with their display of BD-5 components, was absent. Aeromomentum was there with engines but I do not recall any others. The Yamaha-based engines are interesting. I did not see a Miller welding exhibit--surprising. Nobody bending sheet metal or building props that I saw. Saw about 6, maybe 8, aeronautical school and college exhibitors--an indication of how pilots are needed. Shame that no one is pushing the Cozy/EZ/Varieze anymore. There must be many people interested but no one to really point them in the right direction. (Idea for next time: set up a simple canard exhibit by an airplane discussing where to get Cozy and Open-EZ/Open-Varieze plans. That could be a lot of fun.) Good turnout of ultra-light exhibitors. I was interested to see Air Command gyros has a new owner pushing them again. The rest look pretty expensive for what your get. Saw lots of powered parachute vehicles but I am leary of them. Huge, and I mean HUGE turnout of commercial aircraft exhibitors selling everything from biz-jets to helicopters. Saw a couple of electric prototypes--ugly as heck. The military/commercial/non-experimental /vintage presence has made homebuilding a small part of the show these days. The F-35 put on a LOUD display but no vertical landing. I saw four of them parked on the Whitman FBO side but they didn't have one in the military area when I was there. Read a couple days ago that they were grounded for an ejection seat problem. Maybe that's why. A soft-serve ice-cream is up to $5. $6 with a waffle cone. 🙂 The Bally Bomber (1/3 scale B-17) was crunched. I read it had a gear collapse, nose turret was dinged, two inboard props removed and a cylinder removed. There was a sign saying for "purchase". Sad. That was about the only special homebuilt featured near the EAA Arch. I have a friend interested in the Thorp T-18. I took a look at some of them but the cockpit is so deep it's like sitting in a hole. I don't know how you taxi those things. Since returning, I read about many landing ground-loop incidents on Kathryn's Report and a taxiing RV that over-ran another RV and chopped up his tail. EAA had a nice tent and fenced area for Lifetime Members but it looked pretty empty when I passed by. Going, I had to divert into Greenwood, Indiana for a couple hours, then go around some wx west of Chicago that just refused to move out of the way. It was a long day but the wx was great coming home and we logged a 3.7 chock-to-chock from Kenosha back to N.C at about 7.56 gph for 541nm (with no bladder stops!). Total of 67 gallons both ways at about $7/gallon. I am thinking a 4 gph Varieze would be a good project. BTW, with regard to the post above, on the way up, I noticed #1 and #3 getting hotter than usual. Sure enough, I had mounted the upper cowl with one side of the silicone baffles flopped in the wrong direction.