Marc Zeitlin

Maybe. It's 0 Top Since OverHaul (typo - should have been 0 Since Top OverHaul). So who knows what the bottom end is... no indication of SMOH or SNEW.

This plane had an off-field landing on a road back in 2015 due to fuel exhaustion - had some wing damage that took Rich many years to get repaired, as it was down in NC, away from home in LI and Rich has studiously avoided being part of any canard community or organization, for reasons unclear to me. I believe that one of the folks that he took the plane to (although I DON'T know if it was the person who actually performed the repairs or built a new wing - don't know which happened) was Dave Hanson. Nuff Said - Caveat Emptor. Might be perfectly fine, but the prospective buyer will have to ask a lot of questions about the repairs and who did them.

From a climb and cruise performance standpoint, sure. But the aero limits must be adjusted when flying well over design MGW (1325 lb. per the POH). Since the V/N diagram indicates that the LE is a 5G airplane at 1325 lb., and since a 1035 lb. empty weight airplane with 400 lb. of people on board and 1/2 fuel (160 lb.) weighs 1595 lb., all sorts of limitations change (G max., gust loading, landing speeds, rotation speeds, etc.). Along with that, as you point out, the landing gear is an extreme weak point, particularly when heavy. YOUR plane will not suffer this problem, since you copied the COZY MKIV landing gear scheme which is infinitely superior to the VE/LE/COZY III landing gear mounting system (which is miserable). But all other LE's have the stock system, and they fail regularly, in one of many failure modes. And extra weight just exacerbates the propensity to failure.

I wish I could say that it's on the heavy side, but it's only barely on the heavy side. The lightest O-320 LE I've seen was in the 880 lb. range. The heaviest in the 1100 lb. range. Figure mid 900's is pretty common.

You are aware of the wing attach fitting corrosion issue on VE's, yes?

There's only one way, and that's to VERY CAREFULLY drill a hole through the foam from the aileron cove tip to the wing/winglet LE joint. Use a serrated tube to drill it, and expect that you'll damage the skin in at least one place, top or bottom, and need some repairs. Unless you've got REALLY good aim and are lucky. Yeah, so that's not going to work at all. The winglet can work, and once you've got the lighting hole, you can use it for the antenna coax, but it will require a bit of skin surgery and drilling another hold from the center of the antenna to the light mounting area. Doable, if you know what you're doing. Depending upon what you've got for an ELT (and whether you care if your ELT works), you can put a COM antenna on the aft face of the forward seatback - I've done it with 121.5 MHz ELT antennae. But if you do that, you don't have a place for your ELT antenna, unless you get a 406 MHZ ONLY ELT. And as mentioned, there's the gear legs - that was one of the original locations, but sometimes they'd fail due to the flexing of the gear leg. COM antenna, in a fiberglass plane, do not need to be external - the fiberglass is essentially transparent to RF at these frequencies. Same with NAV, Xponder, etc. NOTHING needs to be external.

See: and read some posts before and after mine. Why only POS lights? What good does that do you? You also need a strobe/anticollision light to be legal for night flight. And if you're not going to fly night or IFR, why bother with the magnetometer? And if you ARE going to fly night or IFR, a wet compass, as annoying as it might be to say it, MIGHT be the simplest solution given the magnetometer positioning issues (see below). There's no place on a VE to mount that COM antenna from AAE. I've mounted copper foil antennae on the winglets of VE's, and they'll JUST BARELY fit with a kink in them, but you have to do skin surgery. The gear legs can be a reasonable place for a COM antenna as well. Where's the current COM antenna? Why do you need another COM antenna? Good luck finding a place for the GMU-11 that won't have interference in a VE - maybe the top of the headrest (as long as you don't have a steel plate in your head, or a steel rollover structure)? Get the VE plans and read the CP's. Which plane did you buy, and who did the inspection for you?

When it's new, sure. I helped Mike M. do a field cylinder replacement when he had a cylinder die due to ring failure. He landed in Madera, IIRC, and we flew up there in the COZY with a new cylinder and a bunch of tools. We got the cylinder to the point you suggest, where the pin was JUST clear of the bottom of the cylinder, but it did NOT want to come loose from the piston. Had maybe 1200 - 1500 hours on it, I think. We beat the crap out of it with a hammer and punch, but it wasn't going anywhere. We ended up scrounging some wood, threaded rod, nuts, and I don't remember what else from stuff we found laying around to make a pin puller, and with much effort, pressed the pin out. The brand new one slid in like butter, so we knew the small rod-end was fine. Anyway, yeah, sometimes :-).

I'm very skeptical of that #. That's over 150 hrs/year AVERAGE for >40 years. Even Mike Melvill's Long-EZ, which first flew in 1980 or so, has ~4800 hours on it, and Mike flew the crap out of it. Terry Schubert's LE is also in the high 4000 hour range, but damn few planes have gotten close to 4500 - 5000 hours. >6K hours isn't in my realm of possibility, particularly with multiple owners. Gotta be a typo or a misunderstanding of the logs - I'd love to see them... Could be wrong, but that's how I'd bet.

So I THINK what you've got is a first edition Section IIA plan set. CP #11 (and the 2nd edition plans) show the fuel system that Stephen posted, and which is the fuel system in every VE out there, including yours, I'm sure. No fuel pump. Please ensure that you have the latest copies of the plans, POH, and read through all CP's carefully, so that you don't waste other folks' time chasing down information that's easily available.

I have copies of the 2nd edition plans from 1978 all sections, as well as the third edition POH from 1979. The verbiage you point to does not appear in any of those documents. What is the title and date of the document that has 37 pages and has this information on page 8&9? Was this from some very early CP? Or what? I've examined numerous VE's, and none that I've ever seen or heard of, with O-200 engines, has ever had a fuel pump.

Replace the weatherhead valve, if that's what's installed, with an Allen valve. The architecture of the system is fine, for a hand-propped, gravity feed system - it's the components that were cheap and crappy. Oh - replacing the plans fuel sight gauges with Atkinson style clear sight gauges through which one can actually see the fuel level is also pretty much a requirement, if you want to know how much fuel you have left.

Yes and a bit more than a year ago. I did the last two CIs on the plane.

The shear web fiber orientation is at 45/45 because that's the direction that the stress flows in a cantilever bending beam - when the tips are bending up, the top cap is in compression, the bottom cap is in tension, the fibers in the shear web that are pointing up and outboard are in compression and the fibers in the shear web that are pointing down and outboard are in tension.

Well, it was 7 years ago. The owner/builder bought the spar prefab from some unknown vendor lost in the mists of time - he didn't build it. I recommended cutting out a piece of the shear web so we could burn away the epoxy and see the fiber orientation (should be 45/45) and count the # of plies (I believe should be 6 plies in the web). He never sent them. It was fairly obvious that the spar needed to be cut out and replaced - don't know if that ever happened - haven't heard anything from the owner since 2017.

Unless I'm mistaken, I'm the "experienced builder" that Kent referenced. My position was that this is fixable, but only by an experienced composite repair person. But one could repair it in 2 - 3 simple cure cycles - it's NOT a complex repair. What's going on here is that the shear web is removed - this would allow the top and bottom spar caps to deflect vertically at the outboard end of this region, without lengthening the bottom cap and shortening the top cap. You can see what will effectively happen here:This is a Long-EZ on which the shear web plies were installed 0-90, rather than 45-45. At 0-90, they have almost no shear strength, so are functionally equivalent to a large hole. This plane has experienced ~5G (the POH limit) and the spar shear web wrinkled (this deformation was NOT visible until the wing was removed for another reason). If the hole in the web is repaired correctly, the spar in question would be at 100% strength. As I also said to Kent, my main question wrt this plane (the one with the large rectangular hole in the shear web) is that if someone was stupid enough to cut that hole in the web, what other stupid things did they do that we CAN'T see.

"Statuesque"? I cannot infer from context what word you were going for here. Mr. Rutan may or may not have had a reason for designing and installing one, but in any case he didn't either design or install one. Neither section IIA (continental engine install) or IIC (Lycoming O-235 install) of the VE plans show any instance of an air-oil separator. If folks have an air-oil separator on their engines (as I do) it's not because the plans call for it on any of the Rutan derivative canard designs. Unless I'm missing it somewhere - if you have a pointer to the place in the VE plans that calls for one, I'm interested in seeing it.

So your chap is looking for something that doesn't exist. I've worked on or examined about 80 or so Long-EZ's, and I don't think I've ever seen one that even CLAIMED to weigh less than 830 lb., whatever the engine. And most W&B's are wrong on the low side - about 9 out of 10 planes that I do a W&B on weigh more than their current W&B claims. The lightest O-320 LE I've seen was about 850 lb. Most of the O-235's are between 850 - 925 lb, and most O-320's are between 930 - 1050, with some porkers up to 1100 lb. Terry's estimate for the O-235's is a bit low, and for the O-320's a bit high.

Which version of heavy person did you own? I've been looking into getting one or two...

Minor nit - there is only ever one Phase I. If a major change is made, there are two possibilities (and the OL's need to be checked to see what they are). Either the AWC is invalidated and a new AWC and OL's must be obtained (fairly old OL's require this, from the 80's and early 90's) or some test test period to re-establish compliance with 14 CFR Part 91.319 must be flown, with or without contact with the FSDO, per the OL's. Consult the OL's to determine what the rules for THIS plane are. 1136 lb for a COZY III is pretty high. There are certainly IIIs flying at that empty weight, but I'd want a new W&B performed to determine if that's REALLY the empty weight - most planes are heavier than their owner/builder think they are. And a 364 lb payload leaves you with one person and 3/4 fuel, max, which is pretty useless for a COZY III unless you just want to cart styrafoam around with you. Asking what folks were "able to achieve" is the wrong question - folks have flown Long-EZs and COZYs at 2200 lb. MGW. They fly like pigs, climb like pigs, and a hard landing will beat the crap out of the gear. However, many folks fly LEs and IIIs at or around 1800 lb. MGW, and if you're careful about landings, the plane will last a while. More weight means lower climb rate, longer takeoff and landing rolls due to higher speeds, and lower cruise speeds. You can choose to change the MGW to anything you want, as long as you test to it. But with the very high empty weight, with one 200 lb. person and 1/2 fuel (150 lb) you're basically at 1500 lb., so you're pretty much always flying at or near the original MGW. So you just need to keep that in mind.

The VE fuel system as designed is a joke, with crappy plastic tubing and crappy components. If you have a fuel leak, you should replace all the nonsense in the hellhole with high quality rubber fuel lines from the auto parts store at the very least, with a high quality fuel filter from JEGS, Summit Racing, etc. And never ask what the community uses, as if there's any wisdom in a crowd (or even any agreement). There isn't.

This is the bundle I usually get: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/uavionix11-15210.php Fewer components. I have no preference - it's not at all obvious what the performance differences are, so I'd go with whatever fits the easiest and has the highest reliability, if you can figure that out from reviews/complaints. I doubt that I "recommended" any AVEO landing light pod, if I recall what you're talking about, but I may have mentioned that I've installed something like that on customer's aircraft. They strangely were not very bright, IIRC, and the customer wasn't thrilled. Mounting lights in movable bits never made any sense to me - particularly bits that point straight down when not landing. VE's don't have a lot of space for extraneous crap - finding a location for LL's is non trivial.

Since N611CZ had an accident in 1989, it's been flying at least since the late 80's. http://cozybuilders.org/Accident_Calcs.pdf First line in "non-fatal". Who knows why the A/C has a later date - maybe he just requested new OL's.

The owner of that plane (which I have flown and in which I designed the mounting system for the BRS parachute) wanted the stick on the left, so that's how it was modified.

While I have seen decent implementations of tie downs embedded in the lower winglet, this was obviously not one of those. The wing attach bolt tiedowns (colloquially known as "DuBois style", after the first implementer), are the most robust of all the tiedown schemes. They attach to the most structurally robust point in the whole airplane - the point where the wings attach to the strake. They do not compromise the wing spar or winglet attach area, as the holes through the spar near the tip do (and that's from the LE (and maybe VE) plans - Nat did not invent it) and they don't compromise the integrity of the Trailing Edge in high winds, as the rope over the whole wing/winglet area do. They don't put bending point loads on the wing, as a wingtip tie-down does. They have no extra drag or aerodynamic affect, and are aesthetically invisible. And with an airplane that can rock side to side, the closer to the fuselage the tiedown is, the lower the force on the ground attachment will be. All in all, the best solution. IMNSHO, of course.