Jon Matcho

See this thread with Nate sharing information just before and after this plane became airworthy:  

Wow, impressive!  I assume doing this test is required in Denmark.  Luckily we do not have to do that here in the U.S.A., although some still choose to.  

Congratulations on your milestone!

On 4/12/2019 at 8:45 PM, Jon Matcho said:

I look at the IVO mechanism and I'm just not comfortable with it (whatever that's worth).

I took another look at the IVO prop design and found that my initial assumptions were incorrect.  It works like the neck adjustment for guitars, where adjusting a screw induces a bend in the neck of the guitar (a twist in the propeller blade in the case of the IVO).

I could imagine this being used nicely for infrequent ground adjustments, but not for frequent in-flight adjustments.  I am speculating, but I still don't care for the mechanism as a constant speed propeller solution.

For my situation, I have decided on a basic climb propeller for initial flights and can move up from there once the front landing gear proves itself (along with the pilot, me).

You can find the build log here, at least starting at the point where Nate picked the project up and took it to completion:  http://www.mykitlog.com/users/index.php?user=jenatepilot&project=2121

From that, I'd expect it to be a "stock" Long-EZ and as Andrew points out it's well built, has been flying, improved and actively maintained.  

Stumbled on this video from 1985 when Rutan Aircraft Factory was in full swing.  The introductions shows a Long-EZ in flight so I assume the builder doing the demos is building an EZ.  Grainy and a touch outdated, but I found it to be a great refresher (although I take exception to the suggestion NOT to use gloves -- nitrile gloves may not have been available in '85).

Randy, I'm not Kent but the work is clearly at a high level from the pictures.  Many people have seen Nate's plane so you may get other feedback.

I'd highly recommend a pre-buy inspection and to fully understand any deviation from the Long-EZ plans specifications and dimensions.  For example, how is "Almost double the interior baggage capacity of a plans built long ez." achieved???  Was the airframe widened or lengthened?  "Almost double" is a LOT, so what was the trick?

There's also this gorgeous plane that does not have the same interior quality, but you could make that happen yourself if so inclined.

With $100,000 you can certainly pick between exceptional and gorgeous!

I'm betting that last picture up there is showing upwards of $1,000 in parts.

20 hours ago, Quinton Oliviero said:

Oh, by the way, if you're planning to use the formulas from the article to calculate pitch don't be a weirdo.

Not being a weirdo might be a challenge for me.  I'll do my best to use knots.

I was wondering where the Diameter in your equation was so I reread the article and realized I skipped past the formula parts.  I'm collecting information on options to get the plane back in the air and will verify other flying props against the formulas and eventually report back.

Thanks!

I stopped in the Engine Tent at Sun-n-Fun and spoke with a Rotary guy involved with the recent FAI time-to-climb record, which was set by a 600+ HP turbo-charged Mazda rotary.  The feat and story are both amazing, but was a reminder why I came to the same conclusion as you Quinton.  The story alone behind how they acquired a suitable PSRU should be enough to turn people away.  They somehow randomly connected with some old piece of military equipment where they were able to adapt the PSRU.  Once the record was set they have no plans to fly the plane anymore because it's just too much effort to keep in the air and the overall TBO is probably 50 hours.  The specific concern was that someone would kill themselves.

The Cozygirrrls are carrying the torch on this, but at best I'd expect -- and I only speculate -- that they MIGHT produce a PSRU but I doubt it.  There is no more any good community support for rotary aircraft engines, at least at the level that would work for me.  Someone that had engine experience and a machine shop might have results, but not me.

8 minutes ago, Quinton Oliviero said:

CS, maybe not. But in-flight adjustable options are getting better. IVO Prop and Airmaster have been known around here for a while. There are also a lot of props coming out of Ukraine and Russia these days. Their thing is mostly ground-adjustable props for <130hp and they seem to be marketing their products more toward the STOL guys so I haven't paid them much mind, but if you look at this link (http://www.airtrikes.net/propellers.shtml) you can see that one of the companies, calling themselves Kool has an in-flight adjustable option. If you go this way though, it's worth making sure that they understand that you'll be using a direct-drive engine. Apparently they're not as common outside North America and there have been some blade failures over the misunderstanding. Ground adjustable models run about 1200 USD, in flight adjustable models go for 1800.

2

I know someone flying a Warp Drive propeller behind an O-200 on their TriQ-200, which is ground-adjustable.  I look at the IVO mechanism and I'm just not comfortable with it (whatever that's worth).  At most and for my needs (it's crowded here in north-central New Jersey USA and long runways aren't all that common) ground-adjustable may be the next option if I need it.  I probably will put on whatever is economical for first flights.

The KOOLprop looks like an IVO, but might have different mechanisms.  I don't know.

15 minutes ago, Quinton Oliviero said:

Another option, sure to stir up some controversy, is the Aeromatic propeller. It was a precursor to the modern constant speed propeller and was kind of a thing for a while on certified aircraft in the post-war era. Air pressure against the blades pushes the pitch toward fine, but centrifugal force on a set of counterweights in the hub as the prop speed increases forces the pitch toward coarse, ideally finding an equilibrium. Univair quit making them I think in the 60s, and the propeller went out of style, but a guy named Kent Tarver revived them a few years back. Reviews are mixed to say the least. Some people love them, saying they're the next best thing to a CS prop at half the price, and others say they hate them and would never fly behind one but I can never find much specificity to the haters issue. I have turned up that the prop hubs will leak a little oil, and that in certain flight regimes the prop will seem to "hunt" back and forth rather than settling on a pitch for the RPM it's at. Used ones don't seem to be easy to come by, but no telling if that's good or bad. Tarver used to make claims like "60+ years without a single AD" or something like that (the first ones were built in 1946 and some are still flying apparently), but I haven't seen that in a while and the claim is gone from his website. It also seems he got tired of wrestling with the FAA and gave up on the certified market. I haven't seen any crashes or anything relating to the failure of one of these things, but it also looks like they were never all that popular, so who knows? If you want to see what all the fuss is about a new one will cost you about 5400 USD.

3

@Kent Tarver is on this forum as well, with a lively discussion of the goings on at Aeromatic in this thread.

@Voidhawk9  That makes perfect sense Cameron!  Same here in the USA as to why there are so many older pilots -- they all got trained during wars and planes were cheap after WW2 here as well.

Thanks for your feedback... I expect to be moving forward with a basic fixed-pitch prop before I invest in a Prince or Catto.

43 minutes ago, Kent Ashton said:

I can understand CS props on airplanes that burn 20-50 gph or cruise above 200 kts but for airplanes burning 8-10 gph or cruise <150 kts I don’t see how the tiny fuel savings or small boost in speed can justify  CS.  

Yes, I understand the motivation was for takeoff performance.  The tradeoff is weight and dollars escaping your wallet.  With all this in mind I am locking in on fixed pitch.  I would never have thought about constant speed if it weren't already on the plane.  

19 minutes ago, Voidhawk9 said:

I should call into the Sprint Aero facility sometime and see what's what. In fact, I think I walked right by it 2 weeks ago while hunting for interesting aircraft at NZRT (found a V8 powered Mk26 Spitfire - boy did that sound great taking off!).

 

I'm curious as to how aviation got so well-established in New Zealand.  It's one of those pockets in the world where there's a lot of activity.  Similar story with Brazil and France.

I was looking at those SprintAero props earlier today.  A suped-up O-200 is just about worthy of their SP20a, maybe.  I'd also have to move to NZ to make it worthwhile, which wouldn't be the worst thing I could imagine!

I know a TriQ-200 pilot flying a ground-adjustable Warp Drive propeller which is reasonably priced so that's an option.  I'm also looking at Prince and Catto options which are popular with those flying Q2/200s.  I am settling on getting max HP (expecting a touch over 100) with a fixed pitch due to budgetary constraints.

Thanks for the feedback!

Here's a free article from Kitplanes magazine titled Firewall Forward: Choosing a Prop for Your Project.  Of course you can just ask other flyers what they're using to help decide.

I bought a prop-stricken TriQ-200 that had a high-cost MT constant speed electric prop (on a 100HP+ Continental O-200).  The refurb cost to that was just shy of $7,000 a few years ago, which led me to plan for changing over to a fixed pitch.  Speaking with the original builder, he told me he would have never put the constant speed prop on if he had first installed the high compression pistons for a few extra horsepower.

Later, realizing I'd be changing the aircraft, I decided to bite the bullet and keep the existing configuration with the MT to keep the configuration as-was.

Flip-flopping still to this day, I would go for an alternative lightweight electric constant speed if I could find something in the $5,000 range.  Then again, this thread on the Pilots of America forums makes a good case for moving back to fixed pitch.  Just going through this writing exercise has me back in the fixed pitch plan, so thanks for listening!

Sun-n-Fun 2019 flew by faster than ever this year.  As usual I tried to fit too much into a short timeframe, which included a vacation with my better half, a visit to Disney (for her), a visit with my sister, Sun-n-Fun, then a tour of Kennedy Space Center on Monday to watch SpaceX's historic production launch of their Falcon Heavy rocket.  Well, as soon as we got their we punted Disney which was partly a result of a Palmetto bug in the Airbnb bathroom ('Palmetto bug' is a friendly term for "nasty ass cockroach", and yes, I know they're more common in Florida but they're still nasty).  With that we headed from Orlando to St. Pete Beach to see my sister for a night.

Next day was off to Sun-n-Fun, where I realized I hadn't planned my agenda (which was partly because I wanted to balance my attention between airplanes and my traveling companion).  She was more than accommodating, so by the 2nd day there I was able to see a few things and get into it.  What caught my eye this year was the growing number of small avionics companies.  A company from Italy caught my eye with an instrument that fits in a standard 3-1/8" hole and can be configured as 1 of 9 possible instruments. 

I spent quite a bit of time speaking with the vendor and probing the underlying technology, which amounts to custom microcontroller programming with devices connected through an RS-485 bus (as best I could tell).

You can find more information from them here:  http://www.ifd-net.com/  They want close to $1,000 per primary instrument, but perhaps less for "slave" units (just displays and knobs but without sensors).  This strikes me as being expensive compared to other options such as Garmin's G5 electronic flight instrument which is $1,250 new.  The benefit of IFD's approach is that their instruments are designed to look like classic instruments without the distractions of this new fangled stuff 😉 (which may be inevitable that we all get used to at some point).

Looking back I definitely needed another day to take advantage the free information from various experts and vendors.  I was able to relight my motivational fire to get my butt in gear with my shop, more flying time, and figuring out how to attend more fly-ins this year.  I took a bunch of pictures and put a few into the Sun-n-Fun 2019 gallery for your viewing pleasure.

17 hours ago, TioLoco said:

Hello,

My name is Rafael. Im in Central FL. Iam about to to start building my Cozy IV. My serial is #1760.  I have lots of composite experience in the auto and boat world.

3

Welcome Rafael, your composite experience is a bonus.  That, a 30x30 building (nice!) and any tablesaw/woodworking experience is more than enough to get going (a working shop and wife/partner support are critical IMO).

I was once in the Rotary "camp" after a few years I became convinced to go with an aviation engine for my Cozy.  If you choose the rotary, or any auto-conversion for that matter, you basically have two MAJOR projects:

1. Build an airplane
2. Build an aircraft engine

Both are monstrous on their own and my budget of time does not include the efforts required to educate myself on becoming a one-off engine designer/builder.  Maybe you can hire your friends for the hundreds/thousands of hours it will take to build the engine, but personally, I would rather be flying by that time.

Regardless, welcome aboard!  I'd love to see pictures and updates on what you're doing to setup shop.  I'm resetting my own so that I can build year-round here in the Northeast USA.

Coincidentally I've recently been watching some aviation YouTube videos from the 'Air Safety Institute' channel:  https://www.youtube.com/user/AirSafetyInstitute

Steve Velovsek built that airplane (who happened to be Wayne Hicks' hangar mate).  I recall seeing his airplane just months/weeks away from first flight and being utterly impressed.   Dug up these old pictures from 2005.  Gorgeous airplane is right!

It appears to have had a full-function canard with elevators, and possibly also on the tail (or just trim tabs -- I cannot tell).  

Congratulations Cameron, on multiple fronts!  That's quite the set of projects you've queued up for yourself -- all very important 🙂

Wow, that's quite the plight you went through.  Taking whatever consolation that the indictment gives and moving on sounds best, or you could make it another "hobby" (I've done that before and don't look back and feel that it was fun).

I'll capture some Sun-n-Fun pics in your honor today!  🙂

Jon

Jeff, let's be sure to meet up.  I will have my better half and sister with me on Saturday, but we can definitely catch up somewhere.  My phone number is in my profile -- text me when you have some time to kill.

Jon

12 hours ago, Marc Zeitlin said:

For QO, I wouldn't let Mr. Hanson look at any plane I was going to fly in, much less work on it.

 

That reminds me of when you told me you wouldn't even let someone "tie your shoes" (which I believe was prior to your shoelace incident).

I give up though... what does 'QO' stand for?

I'll be at Sun-n-Fun on Friday 4/5 and Saturday 4/6 without too-specific of an agenda if anyone wants to meet up.  Anyone else going?

I'm looking forward to shaking off this winter's freeze and kick-starting my building muscles!

On 3/22/2019 at 7:21 PM, SteveJ said:

Not mentioned...

My experience/policy dealing with foam and fiberglass construction is that before paint, at the latest, ALL foam MUST be sealed. Too many primers/paints out there that eat too many foams otherwise.

 

There's nowhere that you should see exposed foam.  It would be temporary if you did while waiting for a part to be assembled later.  Most often you have foam + a micro slurry + at least 2 layers of fiberglass + more micro and then paint.  The foam is well protected.

With that said, and back to the original 'bulkheads' topic, I HAVE seen exposed foam on flying planes (albeit rough-finished) within the inside cutouts of bulkheads.  A fix is to fill with 'micro'.

You don't want to let fuel get near foam, which is another topic...

Frank, did you manage to make contact?

For those following along, here's Aeromatic's website:  http://www.aeromatic.com