Pogo sticks were a craze when I was a kid. Just a spring in a pole of 2 sliding tubes with foootrests. You jumped on them, the spring compressed, you bounced up, and if you got the timing right, you could bounce higher and higher. That’s what the the plans “nose spring strut” does, and the only times I’ve been close to hitting my prop were at medium speed taxi over undulating or bumpy surfaces, particularly if there was an uphill slope. I’ve heard of Ez types tipping over backwards like this.
As a keen cyclist and mountain biker, I’ve looked for years for a suitable MTB damper which would be a “drop-in’ replacement for the (now unavailable) Brock unit. Unfortunately, our installation requires a longer, narrower unit than anything I could find. Luckily I met Stefano Ferretti at one of the European Canard fly-ins in France. Stefano flys his VariEze from a short grass strip in Italy, and one of the mods he made was an adaptation of an MTB damper. After some more research, I found a similar model. To get these to work as a “drop-in” replacement for the original Brock unit required machining the damper and making a “peg-leg” spigot to extend it to the correct length, plus press-in bushes at each end. It is adjustable in both pre-load and rebound rate.
Ken McConnell has been testing it on his VariEze for a year, and is very pleased with it. If you would like one of these let me know as I just made a batch of 10 and have 7 left.
