douglasrfix

I have now joined the club of never flown in a small aircraft and not a pilot but bought the plans (1343) anyway club.

Two thoughts: 1) The longer the nose is, the worse the view of the runway from the cockpit. This is probably a minor issue. 2) Assumming all of the length is added in front of the puck, at some point, the longer nose will be stuck in the ground and the puck will be hanging in the air.

Since I (and perhaps others) don't have the AeroCad plans, it would be most kind of you (if you can spare the time) to list the modifications that you are using or not using and why.

Several thousand more words http://www.fram.nl/workshop/controlled_vacuum_infusion/cvi.htm and we think we do big layups

Life is now complete

Where is the "green with envy" smiley? No if only I can presuade my wife that building a Cozy won't cost any time or money and won't interfere with the completion of the replumbing and rewiring of the main house (built 1909) and finishing the apartment over the garage (hanger?).

I stumbled into this the other day while performing activities that did not include cozy building

Here, here. Clearly this thread is rapidly loosing airspeed and the ground is reaching up to smite it. I'm done with this thread and will revive the discussion after I have done some research so that metrics of some sort can be evaluated instead of raw opinion. Sorry about the heat generated, just looking for some light.

I personally disapprove of organizational censorship. I prefer a more burtal approach which is to personally ignore (using in this case, the ignore list each of us can build) the offending source. It is difficult to hold an individual or organization responsible and therefore biased when each individual that disapproves takes the initiative and is therefore invisible. Most people eventually give up shouting when they decide that no one is listening.

I suspect that the pearls of wisdom that can be gained from most commercial sources are sufficiently general that copyright appropriate attributions and limited quotes will avoid any legal issues. How legal access is gained is, as you suggest, a different matter. On the other hand, our use of this host is a donation from someone, it may be that others with access to the commercial sources will be so benevolent. The whole issue of who pays for what and how in this sort of collabrative model is a very real problem, probably best treated in a seperate thread in a different forum. I wouldn't even suggest editing of any post for any reason. I imagine that a summary of the thread(s) would be the goal, with appropriate attribution. First step and all that.

I assume that even with a distillation of the available knowledge, what ever that might include, a concise document is still just a base from which to expand the conversation. It has been my experience that there will always be more questions asked than can be answered with any given level of resource commitment. The "chat room" will always be the place where the "global brainstorming" will occur, and is therefore an essential and permanent feature of our landscape. Unless the builder is wealthy and retired, resources will be constrained. Those may be financial, the available hours in a day, relative proficiency in various skills required to complete an aircraft building project, etc. I hope that I don't need to seek out much in the way of aeronautical engineering to complete my project else I will never even get started with the building. We already rely on Nat's compilation of knowledge as he relied on Burt's. Taking advantage of that compilation is why we are able to attempt this project at all. Someone with out the work ethic and motivation will never make it through 2,500 hours of construction. I merely hope to improve the quality of the end result and the enjoyment of the process. Each will persue their own path, I am just trying to remove some stones.

My personal issue is not the number to be found but the time spent to find them, especially if someone else has already found them. I'd rather spend my time building (I think). I too have very good recall. Unfortunately, I can't recall what I don't have. I have to rely on you for what you have. I am taking a shot at institutionalizing the knowledge. I would hope that a concise best practices indication would help to reduce the doubt. I believe part of the doubt comes from the appearance of vast quantities of information available. This can certainly be cause for concern until the information is finally absorbed, thus eliminating the unknown. I'm just trying to improve the odds of "stumbling". Some folks are better at stumbling than others. I'm just taking my shot at making it a lot more than a chat room.

Wayne, I have no quibble with anything that you said. I expect that the base for most best practices would infact be the sources that you have identified, at least initially. A CSA Subscription is on my list of todos as is the Rutan CD, which contains the Canard Pusher issues. I have read the information on Marc's site as well as anything else I can find on the Internet. Your post here is the first mention of Debbie's book that I remember seeing. This too goes on my list. My interest here is to distill the data (opinion or otherwise) that is out there and turn it into information. My hope is to reduce the time spent searching and researching for the typical builder. My other interest is to creat a the critical mass by producing a product with some added value. In this case it would be the combined analysis of the participants as well as convient access. The more that participate the higher quality product which one would hope produces more participation. I am perfectly aware that the real goal for most of us here is to fly . That being the case, I am not suprised to see that websites come and go. Builders particpate on forums such as this and then drift away. It would be unreasonable to expect that you and Marc, Nat, Burt, et. al. will be active forever. A central repository is my attempt to preserve the knowledge. I hope it is an improvement over what has gone before. That being said, it may also be true, that I am just trying to find a way to pass on what ever knowledge I gain from this experience to whatever future generations of builders there maybe. Sorry about the spelling

I think a proposal would be a good starting point. This would in effect, be a call for contibutions. After the initial overwhelming flow diminishes, I would throw it open to a vote/rating. The intent would be to determine if the topic warrants an identification of a best practice and if so, what the practice is. I would place them in a forum and thread dedicated to the purpose with the current best practices thread locked to avoid posting clutter. New poposals and suggested amendments would be discussed in a seperate threads and then placed in the best practices thread when an agreement has been reached.

During the recent adjustment of the hierarchy and its prelude, I was struck by dust's interest in turning the existing data into information (my words not his). I also found it interesting that he felt that he had reached the point where he would no longer be able to absorb any new information without old information being lost. After giving it more than a moments thought, I wish to purpose the following: We, the Canard Community, should endevor to establish a set of best practices based upon the original plans, the offical updates, and the experience of the Canard Community at large. The intent of a best practice would be to extend the evolution of the original plans beyond the current updates to the plans with the experience of the builder community. The value of the best pratice lies in establishing a baseline that can be used by the "newbie" to evaluate her/his own experiment in aircraft building without an exhaustive search of pre-existing newsletters, e-mail lists, forum postings, etc. I believe that this would allow dust to make his contribution in a place that will be permantly visible to the current and future generations of builders. I will keep the rest of my musings to myself until I see some (if any) feedback on the purposal.