Kent Ashton

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.

The license is a big step but as an A&P you could fix up an airplane in which to take lessons. Not a canard airplane though; they are not well-suited to pilot training.

Chap on FB complaining of high CHTs (pic). His upper side silicone baffles flop the wrong way and are probably releasing a lot of the plenum pressure. Large gaps seen at the corners--those are not good. Also, I wonder about the high aluminum structure aft of the cylinders. I seems to close off a lot of exit area.

Saw this today, inflight parachute deployment: No engine turning, that I can see. Watch to the end. Pilot stumbles out. Cameraman not very helpful. 😞 https://www.itemfix.com/v?t=jgssqt Another Link to the story https://www.aviation24.be/miscellaneous/accidents/pilot-deploys-parachute-on-which-light-aircraft-crash-lands-in-bruges-belgium/

Today: From the look of the wheels, appears to have been sitting outside for quite a while. Might have some useful parts or maybe something can be done with this one. BTW, the Varieze plans are here in the "Open Vari" topic

That doesn't look to hard to build but I wonder about the stress on the crankshaft and crankshaft bore which were probably only designed for centered, rotating loads. Maybe there is enough case thickness to accept an external bearing or to build the case up with welds to add an external bearing to take the loads. I am thinking of Corvair aero engines that have added external bearings to resist prop gyroscopic loads. Google William Wynne Corvair Yah know, there are guys on youtube who demonstrate aluminum casting. Maybe one could cast a new aluminum case using the original case with a boss as a mold, to accept an external bearing. Fun to think about.

Some people are paranoid about liability--would rather donate their airplanes to a museum and take a tax deduction rather than sell it, even though the liability of an original builder is mostly imaginary and those museum airplanes sometime fly again. A data plate on the headrest should not mean anything for this airplane, mfg'd 2001 (A/W date), it is the external one that should match the FAA records per FAR 45.11. However, it would be interesting to find out if the the external FAR 45.11-dataplate is still there and if it matches the FAA record. If the original builder/owner removed it and sold it with the bogus headrest plate, that sounds like fraud to me. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/45.11

I saw this tip from Vic Syracuse on the VansAirForce site. Makes sense

Another Craigslist pearl, three days ago. $12950. "Serious inquiries only" for a 1954 Lycoming engine? Good one! 🙂 https://denver.craigslist.org/avo/d/aurora-rutan-long-ez-project-engine/7507225519.html# More pics in the ad

Seen today on Craigslist, Dallas Mid-cities. Ad posted yesterday https://dallas.craigslist.org/mdf/avo/d/fort-worth-for-sale/7507632227.html FB commenter says "Oh if only the plans were only available." They are. On this site. Open-EZ

Sounds squirrelly. Also, I wonder why the log book photo and the headrest data plate says it was built by James/Jim Martin but the FAA registry has it built by one Joel H. Dembinsky? (pic) Flightaware lists Martin as a Trustee. Last flight Nov '21 (pic). I don't get it. The FAA's registry is current, I imagine. At least the seller apparently has good title. Sounds like the current owner was afraid to fly such a super-high performance airplane. 🙂 Here's my guess (Yes, I have a suspicious mind). The only Joel H. Dembinsky I see is a lawyer. He sells it to Martin but tells Martin he has to change the log and data plate to show Martin as the builder so he won't be liable for it. However, the FAA won't let them change the manufacturer. Martin disposes of the aircraft to White. White flies in the back seat and decides "too fast for me". The business about "Seller won't tell anybody the N-number" is so you won't look up the Registry and start asking questions. I should write a crime novel. 😉

I am finding that there are more files/drawings/addendums in the original download site so I will need to reorganize and compress some of them. The Builders Manual above is only half the manual (Chap 11 to end). Chapters 1-10 was a file to big to load for the moment but it is there. See "related documents" "Plan A1" and "Plan A2". I will eventually get it organized and clean up the topic. For now, here is the link to the Builders Manual Chapters 1-10 https://vdoc.pub/documents/burt-rutan-varieze-aircraft-plan-a1-4tr7u4nc6r60 Link to load tests and other information https://vdoc.pub/documents/burt-rutan-varieze-aircraft-plan-c1-6j108tr9iv10 Link to Canard Pushers, I believe https://vdoc.pub/documents/burt-rutan-varieze-aircraft-plan-canard-pusher-1-5gioii53v270 and https://vdoc.pub/documents/burt-rutan-varieze-aircraft-plan-canard-pusher-2-462o1cb0n4m0 Link to some other blueprints https://vdoc.pub/documents/burt-rutan-varieze-aircraft-plan-b123-5m4sc84gq8n0 That vdoc site is sort of quirky.

I don't recognize the prop but it does not look like one from Hertzler or Catto. Yeah, a fixed-pitch prop is usually carved for one or the other--either takeoff/climb or cruise but it could be something in-between. Those tips are very wide. They will be draggy. If they are tapered it will give more RPM. Hertzler (now Persson), Catto, Whirlwind (pic) all build tapered tips these days.