bferrell

I'll be there all week, and with any luck we'll by flying 4VF in, ugly as sin, but so far luck's not on my side. What night is the CSA dinner on? I don't have my newsletter here at the office, and I wanted to put it on my calendar. Don't feed the trolls, J... B

Jack, Elizabeth and I are shocked and saddened to hear about your loss, and are very grateful that you weren't hurt. Brett N44vf.com

The other thing you can do is add vortex generators on both wings to get the T/O and landing speeds down. I intend to do this, though it's not nearly as pronounced a change as using a CS prop. Brett

Vne is actually 200 knots, best rate of climb (Vy) is about 110 knots, I think best angle (Vx) is 90. I'm not flying yet, but I'm pretty sure those are the POH values. Brett

There are others, a Velocity, a Berkut at x-jets.com Velocity Berkut

I'd ask the folks at cci as well, I understood they had templates for some popular (VE and LE at least, I thought) that they could provide. I had to get templates from Velocity for my aircraft, however. B

You might try contacting them at the below as well, this seems to be where they corresponded to me from, but that was back in January 2003. ccivortex@blast.net

If anyone gets really interested in this, and wants to talk to someone who bought one, let me know and I can put you touch with someone who bought and has been flying one for years. Brett

Have you sent them an email? I got mine from these guys, but they seem to leave abandoned websites around. Here's another: http://abianconi.hypermart.net/Vortex.htm NJ is where I got mine from, so hopefully the address is OK. Brett

Wow! I ordered my prop on 7/1/2004 for December delivery, it was then promised to me in March 2005, June 2005, and August. and finally recieved it in September. Some of that was from him being really busy, some due to his daughter's accident, but it seemed like a lifetime... Brett

Yes, I have a Catto prop, and I love it, he does great work, but it takes A LONG TIME to get your prop. The more you need it, and the more you call to let him know when you need it, the sooner you will get it. I wish it weren't that way, but he is sooo busy that's the deal. Stick with it, you'll be pleased. Brett

Here are the pictures I promised, they had the model at Airventure again this year, and I got my own set of pics. As I mentioned before, they've started the tub, but got distracted, but they did bring the Turbo this year, and were throwing numbers like 250Kts around, so that was pretty cool. Brett

Hey Carlos. Agreed, putting them on the canard is a bad idea in my opinion, but the factory's concept does have them mounted on the aft strake area, with a mid rudder, so if that is acceptable to vayoodev, I think they'd be happy to work with him. I'm not crazy about the idea of a twin velo/canard myself, but apparently Velocity gets a lot of requests for this from folks that just refuse to fly single engine aircraft. Brett

Why is it that people keep saying crap like this?! How annoying. What data do you have for that position? Why would you assume Velocity wouldn't want this? I'm telling you, I have talked with them personally, and they want a twin built! And, recall, the Swings got involved with the company when they built the first retract systems for the Velocity, so why would they consider it a bad deal to have someone else help with development?? If you are serious about this, you should call Duane and talk to him, based on their own comments, I would be very surprised if they didn't assist you in pursuing this. Brett

Also, I forgot to mention, the Velocity concept had a center rudder for single engine control. I can't recall if they did away with the winglets (ala the "firefly" or here) or not. Brett

OK, I didn't see the "engines on the canard" as a critical factor, more of his concept. The Velocity concept has the engines on pods either side of the fuselage, so the engine bay would still be open, which I thought was the bigger consideration. Brett

Marc, Are you responding to the only the Cozy, or the Velocity as well (the subject states Velocity)? The factory has been very clear that they are interested in developing and marketing a twin Velocity, and have done a lot of the design and modelling work to achieve it, and had in fact started the tub for a prototype when the hurricanes hit Florida. Due to that set back, and the resource strain of their UAV and RRL actives, as well as the turbo Conti engine installation, put it on the back burner, so I don't think your comments are relevant to the Velocity at all. The factory *may* not be interested, but I suspect under the right circumstances they would be supportive. The twin is mention in the Velocity newsletters here and here for those that are interested. I looked for a picture of the model, but couldn't find it, though I know I've seen it online somewhere. Brett

If you are serious about doing this, I would suggest that you discuss it with the factory. They had looked at building a twin Velo, but set it aside because of other committments (UAV, the Rocket Racing league, etc.), but might support the effort (at least technically) by a private party. Brett

It's not a Cozy, but I've got the 1:4.6 scale Velocity from rchomebuilts.com I could take some dimentions of it's elevator if that's what you're curious about.

Noel, One other thought that I forgot to mention previously, I worked with an engineer that had left the flight line. He'd loved airplanes as a kid and worked his way up after high school towing gliders to build hours (that someone else was paying for), flew right seat in multis for free to get time, the whole deal. Got fly the Citation for a charter business and found that it was like bus driving, and the hours were spotty, and you had to baby the engines, yada yada yada. His take was that it wasn't "really" flying, that was work, and it didn't meet his flying needs, nor his financial ones consistently, so he returned to engineering. For what it's worth, your mileage will vary. Brett

Noel, Everybody will have a different take on this, so in the end you have to follow your heart. My angle is this, if you're not going to fly for the airlines, why go into that kind of debt? What do you get out of the big name school, really? If you want to CFI, great, but you can do that much cheaper close to home (most likely, anyway). And I know several CFI's locally, and I also don't see that being a "Full-time" job, at least for some time. Given that, and my conservative nature (I'm an engineer, after all), I'd counsel you to get the "safe" degree and do IT work as your day job as cheaply as possible, so you can afford to do your flying and building in your off hours. Thats what I do, working at the "umbrella" corporation during the day, and rushing home to build my plane at night. Sure, it'd be great to be able to get paid for what you have a passion for, but it just doesn't pay like the less pleasant stuff. Like they say, it's called WORK for reason. If you think your IT work is sketchy, try the CFI gig. Every economic whim, or change in weather, swinging your ENTIRE market. With great risk comes great reward, but that's not a bridge I'd be ready to jump off of. Good luck with your choice. Brett

Jack, Landing a canard is a little different than a conventional aircraft. You don't stall it in, with ever increasing back pressure, you fly it to touchdown with very little nose-high attitude. The Velocity POH recommends no higher that 12 degrees, or "canard on horizon". Brett

I'm not a lawyer, but one of our corporate lawyers once told me that a copyright and/or patent was deemed invalid by courts if it wasn't defended by the holder, and thus passed into the public domain. Of course that also doesn't make it right, but his take was that we should only file things we fully intended to protect. FWIW. Brett

Don't know about the speed canard, but you can get a nose light kit from Velocity. Brett

24V equipment is often slightly more expensive and slightly harder to find, but with V=IR, if you up the voltage you can drop the current, and use smaller and lighter wires. The problem is, as Bob points out, there is a practical limit to how small you can go (I think he argues this is 16 or 18 awg) before the wire becomes suceptible to mecahical damage (something, a cable pull or whatever, grabs it or pinches it against something hard and breaks it). Bob's stuff is very well thought out, sensible, and practical. I am an engineer (ME) and I really like most of his points. Greg is very bright and slightly unconventional, and that's great, but sometimes I think he does things differently just because they're different. There's not a lot wrong with his suggestions, and I really like Greg, though I think he does a bit of hand-waving rather than doing the calculations, which lends itself to attack (like "24V wiring will save you 20% of the weight" that Bob takes issue with) but there are things in there that I don't want to be the one proving will work in an airplane. But that's me. Your mileage will vary. B