Rui

Avgas is OK as long as you get rid of the oxygen sensor. Tracy Crook's EFI system does not depend on the O2 sensor, so if you go that route there is no problem with either avgas or mogas. Jet fuel, I don't think so, but if there were a diesel rotary.....

Clifford, Thanks for the info. I have been looking around for an alternate glass supplier (based here in Canada), but after hearing your story I think I'll do the right thing and buy from Wicks. I would like to encourage any other similar stories, both good and bad from experienced builders. I have bought the plans and am in the process of setting things up to start building. Advice like this is invaluable to people such as me.

Just as a small update, I planned to do some research into airframe icing accidents, but it seems like Richard Collins has done that and written it up in the January 2003 issue of Flying. Like all his safety related columns it is well researched and the conclusions he reaches seem sensible. His conclusions agree with the sentiments that many expressed on here. Basically it seems that the people getting in trouble in icing conditions are those that have anti-ice systems. The people without them do the sensible thing and don't fly in icing conditions (or get the hell out of it fast). So it seems like this system may not be worth the effort. I am still intrigued however about the embedded tubes acting as a big radiator for auto conversion designs. Anybody know the thermal transfer qualities of epoxy and glass?? I guess the big problem is when you are on the ground and there is little/no air going over the airframe to cool things down. Anyway, probably just another half-assed idea that has no merit... Fire away!!

I was doing a little more reading about this engine on the internet and it seems that the double wall exhaust is to keep the exhaust at a higher temp until it gets to the catalytic converter. Not as I first assumed to protect the surrounding material from extra high temps. Actully I'm not 100% percent sure either way. The articles are by car reviewers so they may get it wrong too...

for info about the engine just go to Google and do a search for Renesis (or Renisis, I forget the exact spelling). Good thing Mazda chose to invent a new word for it as the search will only bring up stuff related to the engine.... You'll mostly automotive magazine articles about it, but they had everything I said in my original post. If anybody has a better source (ie. from Mazda themselves) please post.

Interesting that you say that the old exhaust system was too hot. The descriptions of the Renesis say that they increased the exhaust temps because the old one was too cold which made the catalytic converter inefficient..... Be nice to know actual temps on the new one...

I was just surfing the web and came accross an aritcle on the new Mazda Renesis engine that will power the new RX-8. This one sounds like the perfect auto conversion for the Cozy!! 250 HP at 8500 RPM (probably ~200 at a more conservative 6500). Also it seems that it is quite happy to go up to 10,000 RPM. 30% lighter than the old 13B. Physically smaller than the old engine!! Also it burns much leaner than the old, the only stat I could find about this was that it used 40% less fuel at idle than the old engine. This, of course is useless information since it won't be at idle much of the time, but it bodes well for higher revs as well. The only thing that worries me somewhat is that they have increased the exhaust temps greatly so that the catalytic converter works better. It seems that this required a double wall exhaust (not too sure about this one site just had a passing remark about it). So an engine with a published redline of 8500 RPM, limited to ~6500 means that it would be running at ~75% even when you have "full" throttle in an airplane application. Now all you have to do is add a turbo and you can have that power at all the altitudes you care to go.... Sounds really nice. Hopefully, in 4-5 years when I'll be making this decision there will be a reasonable supply of them around. Is anybody currently looking more deeply into this new engine option?

Just finished talking to Laura at Airheart about my small, test epoxy order. We confirmed a few things about the order and addresses. They don't take credit cards since they usually deal with large comapnies but were nice enough to accept a personal cheque and will ship when I send them an email that I have sent the cheque, not when it actually gets there. In all, it came to $89.67 including tax. I also mentioned my search for Canadian suppliers of the foam and glass and she said that she will ask their technical guy (Peter) when he comes in. Appearantly he is also an aviation nut and may know a bunch about this. She also mentioned that if I knew of any other builders in the area that it would be a good idea to pool the shipments as the shipping costs would be less. So how about it, any builders in the Calgary/Edmonton area interested? Overall I got a very good feeling from dealing with this company. As long as the shipment goes through (and I have no reason to believe that it won't) I heartily recommend them to any Canadian builder.

Jim, Those numbers you mentioned that you and Phil went through, are they essentially the same ones Phil has on his web site? If not, can you post a summary of them? I had ruled out RG as being too expensive for what it gives (~15 kts). If this is not the case I may have to reconsider.

Well I am not building but am 95% sure that I will be building in the near future. I would be very interested in getting in contact with anyone here in Calgary building one, or even anybody building a composite plane. As everybody else I have been doing preliminary materials sourcing. I have tried a couple of plastics stores here in town but none of them seem to have the required materials. I have tracked down the North American importer for MGS epoxy and to my great surprise they are located in Ontario. Their website is http://www.airheart.on.ca. I asked for a supplier here in Alberta, but they don't have one so I ordered a couple of litres of L335, 0.5 litres of H335 and 0.5 litres of H340 all for a total of $55.80 plus $28 shipping plus GST. I figure that the equivalent Wicks order would be at least $120 Canadian. The one fly in the ointment is that I emailed them to send it last Friday and still haven't had a confirmation that it was shipped. Anybody have a line on foam and fiberglass suppliers? Actually for foam I noticed that the Dow Styrofoam dock billets are the required 7". Is this a coincidence or is all the polystyrene foam used basically Styrofoam of the appropriate thickness?

From a purely technical point of view this forum is much more accessible. I can look at new posts from anywhere that I have internet access. This is not the case with the mail list. Also, I have used Maddy's seach engine for old mailing list topics and don't like it much. In using it I wasn't easily able to tell whether a better search term would help me finding what I was looking for or whether the information just wasn't there. In addition to giving individual messages that match a search criteria it should also give a link to the thread. A fully webified, searchable representation of the past mailing list articles would be really nice. Why haven't I posted to the mailing list, I really don't know. I guess its just that this forum is easier to access. On a more subconcious level, it is nicer to see your post on there are soon as you click the Post button. Its more of an instant gratification thing. I also like seeing who else is online. Also the newness of this forum has some appeal for new builders in that it somehow make everybody equal. Its kind of like what goes on when you join a group of people that have been talking to each other for a long time, you feel ackward asking certain things for fear that everbody will say (just as you have in your post) that the topic has been discussed and that they don't want to go through it again. While I can see their point (I wouldn't want to rehash things over and over again with "newbies"), for us newbies it feels more like you are involved when you are participating in the conversation rather than just reading about it in the archives.

In preparation for building I've been trying to find local sources for glass, foam, and epoxy. The foam shouldn't be too big of a problem but getting glass as it is described in Wicks (ie. BID 8.8 oz and UNI 7.0 oz) is a problem around here. I have been using the Wicks numbers in the absence of any other information, but is there a range of weights that are acceptable? Also more generally, are there any guidelines for the foam (ie. I notice that Wicks says that their polystyrene has a flame retardant addative, should I ensure that the supply I get also has this?) and epoxy that I should be looking out for? Is this type of infomration in the plans (ie. not just the approved/non-approved suppliers)?

About the lightening issus (maybe this should be a new thread....) Isn't there already some metal in the wings? Aileron torque tubes, rudder control lines, copper antennas? Will a lightening strike seek out and destroy these items?

Jim, About dearating the coolant, I have never heard of this problem. Can you elaborate John (or just point to a web page that explains it). About leaks. I have thought about this, the simple fix is to put a valve that shunts the coolant back to the engine, sort of like what the thermostat does to block off flow to the radiator when the coolant is cool, except that it would be manually controlled. The thing that still worries me most is the delamination issue. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it, is this a valid concern? I haven't had a chance yet to look up temps that you have to keep under, but I would assume that they are lower than typical coolant temps. This would make the risk of foam-glass delamination greater which worries me. I guess the only way to find out is to create a test piece of fibreglass with a network of tubes and run some hot water through it.... Maybe when I actually start building the plane. One last point, the title of this forum is the Coffee House, a place for general chit-chat. Unfortunately I have no other venue to air my ideas (ie. I don't know anybody locally who has experience with fiberglass canards) so I post them on here hoping that others will see the errors of my ways and speak up. Fortunately this is exactly what is happening!!!

Jim, Thanks for your reasoned and logical reply. I understand your statement about going beyond the limits thinking that some system will save your bacon (though the same thing can be said for airplanes in general; humans were never meant to fly, its just that this gee-gaw of ours lets us do it). In general I also agree that the extra complexity can cause more problems than it solves. I have rejected both pressurization and (nearly...) retracts for these types of reasons. I am still not convinced on rejecting the de-ice idea. As you said, it looks like the electric idea is out. But I like John's idea of using coolant. I wasn't thinking of using a hollow D-channel as you suggest. I was thinking that I would embed rows of narrow aluminum tubes along the leading edges and glass over them. Kinda like what is done with the coaxial cable for antennas. Lots of testing would have to be done (ie. what spacing would be effective), to first see if this would actually work. Am I up to it? I'm not sure, I guess it depends on whether anybody can come up with a good technical reason why it can't work. I did a search of the archives on Maddy's site last night and found a couple of references to unexpected ice. They manouvered to avoid it, but it was still pretty scary. I am sketchy on the details (it was kinda late....) but I hope collect the relevant stories and put them on the web.

Joe, Well the policing body is the APPEGA (I think thats the acronym) which is the professional organization for engineers here in Alberta (I'm not sure whether other provinces have the same setup). Their members are expected to report violations to the organization which then talks to the company. Usually it all gets resolved, but APPEGA does have the provincial law as a stick if the company is obstinate. The reason why I know this is that our company was acquired by an American company a while ago and they still refer to all us here as engineers (some of us do actually have an engineering degree so its not totally wrong, but....). Have you had much experience with composite airframes in you A&P career?

Thanks Joe, I am also not an engineer, I'm a software developer where having innovative ideas is usually a plus. I do realize, however, that building a physical thing is different than building a logical thing in software so I am very interested in what other, more experienced builders/real engineers think. btw, it is common in the States to call a software developer an engineer. Where I live (province of Alberta) it is actually against the law to refer to yourself as an engineer if you do not have an engineering degree (I have Comp. Sci.).

John, I do plan on doing reasearch on this. Thanks for the pointers. I tried the NTSB site a few times and after it rumminating on the subject for 5 minutes or so it came back with an error. I guess those 140,000 records are really long, or they have a LOT of people searching, or really slow hardware.... I'll try again when I have more time with hopefully better seach criteria. About your idea, sounds reasonable, sort of a radiator just underneath the skin...... hmmm, speaking of a radiator just underneath the skin..... how about such a system for engine cooling??? Yes, I know I have a lot of crazy, half-baked, death inducing, ideas, but I think this is half the fun of building your own equipment.... Just thinking off the top of my head, I would think the coolant temp would be way above what the foam/glass can handle without causing structural damage. And then there's the possibility of a a leak.... But the possibility of a non-drag causing cooling system has a certain appeal....

Jim, No, I don't have a death wish. And if you would actually read my messages you would see that. My intent with both pressurization and anti-ice is safety. Flying above nasty conditions and having a system that may help you get out of such conditions if you find yourself in them improves safety in my books. It seems like pressurization is out of the question, but nobody, including yourself has provided any reasonable, technical reasons why this can't be done. I don't consider scare-mongering comments about people dying in icing conditions to be a good reason against such a system. As I said before, I see such comments as a good reason to come up with a system that may help. I guess you assume that I would fly into icing if I had an anti-ice system. A somewaht reasonable comment from stories I've read, but I have also read many stories where the weather forcast called for perfectly nice conditions and the pilot found himself, unexpectedly, in ice. If composite planes are so terrible in ice, this situation would result in a crash. If a lightweight, simple, and not very expensive system can be developed to help in this case it would only be reasonable to do it.

Jim, Your comments worry me somewhat. Do you (or anybody else) have any practical evidence of fiberglass canard's bad performance in icing conditions? As I said before this wouldn't be for flying into known icing, but for gettting out of it once I find myself in it. I think I will be flying a lot in the mountains where weather changes rapidly and unexpectedly. If this type of airplane can't handle mild icing then I think this is an argument FOR putting some sort of system that may help you get out of a difficult situation.

Ok, if its pretty simple why haven't I seen any other builders do it? Is it mostly because they don't fly in areas where this might cuase problem (something which I don't believe in a cross country plane), or is the danger not considered important enough? I am doing my pilot training now, so don't have any experience in the real world of flying, but the Met part of ground school placed a pretty high importance on the dangers of airframe icing (ie. I came away with the idea that if you're unlucky enough to hit moderate to severe icing you could kiss your ass goodbye, is this not the case?).

Thsi question is along the lines of my pressurized cozy question a while ago (yes, I am a glutton for punishment...) Anyway, we've had a bit of a storm blow through over the last day or so which produced a lot of severe icing conditions. Has anybody looked at anti-ice systems that would work on a fibeglass plane. I am not too familiar with anti-ice (other than the glycol that ramp attendants spray on the airplane prior to takeoff) so any general information that you can provide woould be useful as well. My limited knowledge would point to an electric system for weight reasons, but thats just my guess. How hard would it be to home-build such a system? Around hee some people use heat tracing wire on pipes to keep them from freezing, would it be possible to adapt this type of idea and embed heat tracing wire in the fiberglass and have a poor man's anti-ice? My worry is that it would overheat the foam/glass and cause similar poblems as painting the plane a dark color, but if some temp sensors were also embedded in the area.... Note: I wouldn't consider flying into icing conditions with this system. Basically it is a backup safety thing. If I inadvertantly fly into icing conditions it would be nice to have a system that could get me out of it.

This is slightly off topic, but you do mention propellors... Has anybody tried an Ivoprop with a Mazda (or Subaru for that matter)? I have heard that they aren't recommended for large 4 cylinder aviation engines (ie IO-360) because the power pulses are too large, but with a rotary I would assume this wouldn't be a problem. To me they look like a very nice way of getting a constant speed prop without the huge cost. I laos think that its really cool that you can easily add/remove blades from the prop.

They seem to be pretty sure of themselves, but I worry about the thing flying correctly. I have heard that the Stealth bomber takes quite a bit of computer assisted coordination to acheive stable flight. This plane looks very similar in shape so I worry about its actual flight characteristics. I also noticed that the description of the LOM engine says that the integrated supercharger can be used for cabin pressurization to 2 PSI. This is also the claimed pressurization level of the Atlantica, but there is nothing saying that Wingco is doing this.... Has anybody ever tried an LOM engine in a Cozy? Anyway it does look like a cool plane, but Nat's advice against kits that may go away if the company fails comes to mind everytime I look at kitplanes. I think the only kitplane I'd be comfortable getting is an RV, but they don't meet my requirements...

Wow, thats amazing. I too, have heard of the extraordinary measures people go to to build their planes. One other reason why I haven't started yet (btw, to others, Mike started this thread as a reponse to a private message of mine where I said that I have been lurking all the builders sites for about 3 years now and that I hadn't started because of my unsuitable location) is that I haven't actually ever seen a Cozy (or a Canard, or any other fiberglass plane for that matter) in the flesh. I am hesitent invest a bunch of money into plans and materials but then find out that there is something that I have missed and it is crucial enough for me to change my mind. At this point this is very unlikely , but I still would like to see one up close. I was hoping to go to Oshkosh this year, but things came up that made that impossible. I think I will be going to Las Vegas sometime in the late Winter early Spring and will have some time to visit Nat (if he will have me ). Anyway, I am in early stages of planning, looking for local suppliers of materials as doing the shipping thing accross the border is a hassle in my past experience (so much for "free trade"). If/when I find suitable foam /glass/epoxy suppliers I may try doing some small fibreglass layups to see what its like.