Richard Riley

Wow, is it that high? It's been about 4 years since I've bought any in quantity, I had no idea. I've been thinking it was in the range of $25-35/yard - sounds like I'm out of date.

Deltahawk's not a turbine, it's a diesel. If you go looking to stuff a turbine in a Long EZ eventually someone will try to sell you on a converted APU (which is what the Innodyn prototype is). Don't do it.

I'll be happy to consider it when Innodyn delivers their first engine. That would be sometime after the sun goes dark. If you want to talk about a turbine engine that actually exists, we could talk about a 250 C-18. There's a guy that's just put one on a Cozy, with a custom gearbox. Very interesting. Or there's the Deltahawk, which has a good shot at delivering a batch of engines to it's first buyers, and might even be viable long term depending on the market in general. Innodyn is vapor.

Yeah, the engine part is simple - just get an IO 540. Extend the fuselage a foot and move the pilot and passenger forward. Make the wingskins and spar caps out of carbon. Be sure to use a good pair of wheel pants and gear leg fairings.

It's essentially identical to the wing on the original Cozy and the Long EZ. The Cozy 4 wing is larger. The differences between the Berkut wing and the Cozy wing are tiny. Bigger ailerons, a straight trailing edge (got rid of the kink at BL 55.5) and winglets tipped out just a touch - just for looks. Mark's right. Bigger engine, smaller fuselage, retractable gear, slicker cowl, lighter empty weight. No magic.

If you want retracts because they look good, by all means go ahead. If you want to do 200 knots and you really want to fly - go fixed. Look at this graphic http://wingsailor.com/assets/images/WingVsWireNoText600.jpg The drag of the round wire is the same as the drag of the large airfoil shape. That gives you an idea of how much drag a properly faired landing gear gives you - about as much as a whip antenna the same length as the gear leg. Keep the money you'd send to Innodyn. It's vaporware. DeltaHawk may actually happen, but I won't plan on it until they've shipped a dozen or so. If you want a throttle in the back, it's simple enough to put one there. If your goal is the Velocity - go build a Velocity. Very few people finish a homebuilt, fewer finish two. You won't get the money out of a Long EZ that you put into it, much less get any pay for your labor.

If your goal is 200 knots, build a Long EZ with fixed gear and a strong 180 hp engine. Use a good, clean cowl, a long nose, Klaus wheel pants and landing gear fairings. It will do 200 knots. There's a guy out there that claims bigger engines make canards go slower. He's wrong. VG's might help some on the bottom end, they certainly won't help on the top. You can do retracts, but count on an extra $10k at least, another 500 hours building, 3-5 knots on the top end, and at least one gear up landing.

The Berkut is approved in the UK. Glen Waters' G-REDX is being joined by Tom Olgierson's airplane.

At least to answer the very first post - the amount of electricity it would take to de-ice wings is prohibitive. Thousands of amps. The problem is the supply of cold wind whipping away the heat is effectively infinite. Your wings are going to be the temprature of the air, whatever that is. I looked into doing a weep system on Berkut with molded wings. It is possible, but it's expensive. Don't forget the LE's of the winglets, the canard *and* the s-channel/elevator LE. Probably have to put some spray heads in the s-channel to get the elevator. And you have to do an area of the canopy so you can see.