Marc Zeitlin

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with an O-290-D2. I've had a few customers with O-290 powered LE's. Obviously, the performance will be in between the O-235 and O-320 LE's. The operative words here are "has been sitting for a long time". ANY engine that's been sitting, unused, for a long time, particularly if it was not pickled or preserved correctly, is almost certain to have corrosion issues unless it's been sitting in the Gobi desert. Which then implies that at least an IRAN is required, if not an actual overhaul/rebuild. The engine would require a VERY extensive inspection to determine its actual state. One of my customers with an O-290 had Lycon upgrade it to an O-320, so that's a possibility as well, if the engine's in good shape.

They're there for different reasons - one for reducing spanwise flow (large lower winglet) the other (small lower winglet) for reducing drag. So, apples and oranges. No - he just copied the large lower winglet that Burt designed for the Long-EZ. The COZY/etc. wings are all identical to the Long-EZ wings, aerodynamically. Only the strakes and spar cap structures are different.

Those are the first implementation of the original "Whitcomb Winglet" design, invented by Dr. Richard Whitcomb. Look that up. Burt was the first to use Whitcomb's theories on an airplane winglet. The idea was increased efficiency / lower induced drag. The standard LE/COZY/Velocity/etc. slab winglet is there because it assists in extending the rear CG limit for deep stall protection. They also assist in aileron effectivity at low speeds. Some people remove them because they don't like the aesthetics or believe it will reduce drag (which it will, but not by anything you could measure at our normal cruise speeds). On a Long-EZ, where you don't have to worry much about deep stall because it's relatively easy to keep the CG fwd of the 103" rear limit since there isn't a lot of variation in front seat weight, removing the lower winglets isn't a really big deal (Berkut has the same argument). But in a COZY, where there is a LARGE CG motion with front seat loading and it's easy to get too far aft if you forget to put in enough ballast when flying solo, the lower winglets are more important. Extra margin... On a four seat SQ2000, I'd DEFINITELY have lower winglets, for all the same reasons as the COZYs.

Note the empty weight of 773 lb. That's an INCREDIBLY heavy O-200 VE, particularly since it's got manual nose gear and an ancient (probably original) panel. With 26 gallons of fuel (full fuel) a 181 lb. pilot (no baggage or passenger) will put this plane at the extended MGW of 1110 lb. This is a single seater for a relatively (given the size of US persons these days) small person...

And it's the inside, so it won't be filled or finished, so no one even cares what it looks like :-).

While this cut seems to go through the inside layups, including the 4 BID reinforcement (given what the pic looks like), the area under the torque tube cutout is a low stress region. What _I_ would do here is to fill the cut with flox and then add 4 plies of BID in the same orientation as the reinforcement layups, feathering them in. The first ply would be 1" long, the next 2" long, etc. And call it good. And obviously, in the future, be really careful when grinding/cutting/drilling into major structural members.

This is certainly one place where air might exit (that I forgot to mention), but in my case, I have covers over the main spar openings aft of the seats in the cabin, with only very small openings around some wiring, so while this might be part of where the air is going, it's hard for me to believe that all the air coming in through my vents is going out through a couple of 1/4" annuli around some wiring bundles. If you don't have a cover over the spar, then yes - this could be a major source of exit air.

Nick Ugolini is the only person that claims to have sealed their cabin up so tight that they actually need to provide a dedicated air outlet. Given the leakiness of most of these planes, it's rare that a dedicated outlet would be required. I can tell you that on my plane, I've spend a lot of time sealing my nose gear area, canard perimeter, elevator offsets through the fuselage sides, fuselage top perimeter, and canopy seal. It's pretty tight, with no noticeable air leaks in any of those places. My engine muff heater will keep my feet warm and the cabin at 30F - 40F above ambient. My two large diameter air vents: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/largealumavblack.php will just about blow me into the back seat when fully open, taking in air from the NACAs on the fuselage sides. But I have no dedicated outlet(s), and I can safely say that I have NFC how the air gets out, but it obviously does. Maybe through the two holes in the top of the landing gear bulkhead area, even though they have loosely fitted covers? Maybe through the electrical conduit channels into the lower cowl? Maybe through the rear curvature of the canopy, above and behind my head, so I wouldn't know if air was flowing in that area? No idea. Almost none of the planes I work on have dedicated outlets, and no-one complains that they can't get air to flow in through their cooling vent. Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't install a dedicated vent, and I've seen a few in the turtleback, next to or aft of the passenger's head area. If you have one and don't need it, it doesn't hurt, but if you don't have one and need it (unlikely, but possible) you'll want one. My $0.02.

If you even get that. John McAvoy, after a 3 year retrofit on his Long-EZ, noted that at some altitudes he was getting exactly zip for a speed increase, and at best a 2- 3 kt. increase (IIRC) and still had the loss of fuel capacity. I'm 100% with Kent here - completely against retractable mains on a standard Long-EZ or COZY that cruises in the 160 - 180 KTAS range. Do a good job on your wheel pants, gear leg fairings and intersection fairings and you'll be in about the same place with far less maintenance and cost.

I have a Defiant POH PDF. Email me.

Depends on the type of plane. As Kent indicated, in COZY's and LE's, they generally go on the firewall above the spar. On VE's, that's not available, so they tend to go in the hellhole (which is a nightmare, unless you've got a hellhole access cover underneath the landing gear, and even then... Some VE's have an enlarged hellhole access hole in the rear seat seatback, and mount the box on the back of a cover for the hole, with service loops for the wiring.

Works perfectly.

So the manual says that if you have ESP turned on, ESP takes effect when the plane is 500 ft. AGL and the A/P is NOT engaged. I don't see anything about being able to disengage it with the CWS or A/P "off" button, since it's on even when the A/P is off. Now, I don't know if you've got a G3X or a G5 - with the G5, low airspeed protection is not available, but with the G3X, it is. While discussing random stuff yesterday with an Air Force F-16/F-35 test pilot friend with whom I work on various projects and also whose COZY MKIV aircraft with a full G3X/GNS750 panel I maintain, he mentioned that he doesn't like the ESP functionality, because it will sometimes do unexpected things. A similar one of which, described below, has happened to him: Imagine that for some reason, your IAS isn't working correctly - blockage in the pitot tube, bugs in the pitot tube, leak in the pitot tube - whatever. It's early in your test flight period, and you don't know the plane well yet. And you've told the system that the minimum airspeed you want to maintain is 75 KIAS. So you take off, but your IAS stays at 43 KIAS, for some reason. You've had enough instruction in a COZY MKIV to realize that you wouldn't be in the air if that's true, and that judging by the attitude of the airplane, you're probably at 80 - 90 KIAS. You get to 500 ft. AGL, the ESP freaks out and bunts the plane over to try to maintain 75 KIAS, but keeps pushing harder because all it sees is 43 KIAS. You're now impersonating Popeye, wrestling with a new plane early in the Phase I period that's trying to dive into the ground, while trying to figure out WTF is going on, and trying to figure out how to get into the correct menu to turn the F-ing ESP system off, if you even figure out that THAT's the problem within the next minute or so. No thanks. No A/P, no retracting landing gear, no ESP, no automation (except data collection), until you've determined manually that the aircraft is working correctly per the plans and POH, and using electronic assistants, as much as I am an advocate for them in a PROVEN aircraft with KNOWN characteristics, is not what I'd recommend.

Phase I activities are done regularly out of KMER - that's where the Valkyrie tests are ongoing (another project with which I had a small bit of review work). No problem testing there, and yes - with the huge runway and flat ground around, it's a good place for testing. Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about that - I'd probably refrain from turning the A/P on until I knew how the plane flew... Given the similarity in wing/canard positioning and fuselage size to the COZY MKIV, I'd normalize the COZY FS's to the SQ's, and use the COZY first flight box as my starting point, near the front. Not the front of the whole envelope. Aileron fences work well on the highly swept VE wings. On Long-EZ / COZY wings (same as SQ) the reports are unclear - some folks say they made a difference in low speed handling - others say there was no difference. I have no data on this one way or the other - I haven't tested them on my plane (probably should, someday - its on the list). Be happy to come up for a visit. Once or twice a year we fly into Gnoss to go sailing with a Long-EZ friend out of Sausalito, where he is a member of a sailing club. My wife loves Sausalito.

To the extent that one can tell from digital pics, Joel's work certainly looks top-notch. Obviously a good thing. I would suggest that you read the accident reports here: http://cozybuilders.org/N2992_Accident_Eval/index.html and here: http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2012/08/1-dead-in-crash-of-single-engine-plane.html and make whatever changes to the aircraft's doors and seats are necessary to increase the safety of the plane. Given it's E-Racer heritage, I'd also recommend (not that I don't recommend this for ALL E-AB aircraft, but especially for kit aircraft that were never fully tested by the MFG's) that you perform an intensely complete exploration of the performance envelope during the Phase I period, both structurally and aerodynamically. When I examined the SQ2K that's for sale in San Diego (and I strongly recommend that no one ever purchase that plane with the intent of flying it, as it should never leave the ground again) I saw many design and fabrication issues that I thought were marginal. I do not know enough about what the kit is or the plans say to determine whether those marginalities were part of the design, in which case modifications may have to be made (rudder pedal attachment to achieve necessary stiffness, Master Cylinder mounting, fuel vents inside the cabin, etc.) or whether they were builder mods, in which case you won't have to deal with those stupidities. I'm also not at all a fan of the glassed in nature of the canard - I think that's a maintenance nightmare in the case of needing to modify or repair anything. But it does look like you got the best of the breed in Joel's project, and I hope that you can get it flying safely and with the testing necessary to prove that it is so.

(1) and (2), yes. Since the longeron incidence angle will be about 1.5 - 2.5 degrees (nose up) in cruise, that puts the thrust line just about level in cruise. (3) is approximately correct, but will depend on what engine you're using and who you bought your engine mount from (or how you fabricated it).

Ummm, I'm pretty sure you were informed that the engine needs a rebuild - that there's substantial corrosion inside, right? There's no way you should fly that engine in it's current condition. And that corrosion was diagnosed a couple of years ago, so it can only have gotten worse (corrosion never fixes itself...).

I went to the Aircraft Spruce website and searched for "flox". This was the first link: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cmpages/flockedcotton.php

Joe D. gave you some useful reference points. I'd point you to pages 52 through 61 of the POH, which shows performance for an O-235 LE. That's at an MGW of 1000 - 1400 lb, so at 1500 lb., figure a bit worse than the 1400 lb. curves. CG actually has at least as large an effect on top speed as MGW, so flying at the rearmost CG position (103") will get you the best performance.

The short answer to the title of this thread is "kind of" - a 970 lb. LE with an O-235 that you expect to fly regularly is on the heavy side. The performance will still be better than a C-172, but a plane 50 - 100 lb. lighter would be better. At 970 lb., the implication is that if you ever upgraded to an O-320, you'd be well over 1000 lb. - that's a heavy Long-EZ, even if one sets one's MGW to 1500 - 1680 lb. Competent? Flyable? Safe? Sure. There are many LE's in this weight range. Now, it may not be easy to find a lighter LE - most are a lot heavier than they should have been. And given the relative performance of this plane against spam-cans, it'll still be better (probably substantially so). So I'm not saying don't get it - just make sure you know what you're getting, and for Cthulhu's sake, get a Pre-Buy examination from someone like me or FreeFlight Composites who knows what they're looking at and can advise you clearly of what you're getting into.

I recommended to Izzy that Evan take a look at Tom's plane (N40TD). It is NOT flyable and it needs an engine rebuild (and it wouldn't hurt it to rip out the panel and electrical system), but it looked like a structurally sound plane that could be turned into a nice plane with some elbow grease and TLC.

Vertical antennae are either COM or ELT. ( or very poorly installed VOR). No reason for external COM antennae on a Long-EZ.

You know, you're not the first person in 30 years to think of putting a Long-EZ or COZY MKIV into 3D CAD - I was one of them, in 1995. But everyone who tries - who's not just in it for the fun of building a 3D model but thinks that they're going to obtain some advantage by having a 3D model - quickly comes to the realization that it's a total waste of time, and ADDS work to the build, rather than making it go faster. But hey - CAD away, and let us know if you come to a different conclusion from everyone else. There have been one or two Rotax Long-EZs, but all but the largest turbo'd version (the 915iS at 141 HP) are a bit anemic for a Long-EZ, and totally inadequate for a COZY MKIV. And given that Rotax's cost as much as Lycomings, I don't know why you'd want one. If all you want is auto gas compatibility, use a Lycoming with 8.5:1 or lower compression cylinders - STC's are available (not that you need one, but it indicates that it's been tested and approved). Then find a sealant for the inside of the strake tanks (polysulfides are preferred) and use that to seal the tanks. Numerous folks use mogas in their COZYs and Long-EZs. If you can find mogas without ethanol, you don't need the fancy sealant. Put an SDS EFII/EI system on a Lycoming and the BSFC is as good as any available gas engine, and it's almost FADEC.

Bill's LE has a Wilksch Diesel - NOT a Deltahawk. It's been years, and still not successfully operational. http://www.longezediesel.com/ Note that the Wilksch webpage does not even indicate engines for sale, after 26 years of development: http://www.wilksch.aero/aboutus

To whose Subaru powered COZY are you referring? I know of three - Al Wick (165 HP version - hasn't flown in 7 years or more, never went cross country, maybe had a couple hundred hours on it [agreed trouble free, but hardly "flies a lot"]), Keith Spreuer (220 HP version - flew a LOT, but had MANY failures, and has swapped it out for a Lycoming) and Phillip Johnson (also a 220 HP version - unless something has changed recently, doesn't fly much and doesn't have a lot of time on it). Non-Lycoming powered canard aircraft have been few and far between, with only a couple that could be considered successful. Perry Mick's Mazda could be considered successful, and Gary/Char Spencer's direct drive V8 could be considered successful, both within narrow definitions of the word "successful". You want to tinker? Use an auto conversion. You want to fly? Use a Lycoming. And Deltahawk has bee saying they're just about ready to fly since 1995. So there's that. You NEVER want to be an early adopter of an auto conversion engine - the E-AB world is littered with people that have been duped and lost a lot of time and $$$ chasing that chimera.