Big Steve

I have a copy of the Defiant owners manual if you are interested. STeve

My acs catalog is a 2006-2007 and I am mistaken there is no long eze kit to be found. I must have buzzed through really quick saw the cozy and just put it in my brain it was a long eze and thought no more about it sorry. The catalog does say if you call them they have material lists for other airplanes not listed in the catalog. Longeze's have made Jim Irwin a rich man I am quite sure that he has a parts list for them. STeve

Looking at my current acs catalog they show that they still sell chapter kits for the Longeze. STeve

There are people out there that have the nerve to fly in stuff like that? I need something around me to make me al least feel safe. STeve:D

I have a new score to report: I bought a Varieze partial material order on ebay for $200 it cost me about $380 to ship it from Louisana to Idaho. I now have enough glass to finish my cozy and I will only need to buy 1 more big block of wing foam. I also have a varieze gear leg bow out of the deal I am selling that to offset my purchase It is to light obviously for the cozy. If I added all the stuff up I purchased I think it would cost me close to $2000 to buy the material and then I would have about the same in shipping. I guess the tip is ebay is not a bad place to shop. STeve

I believe tha Longeze gear is heavier. STeve

I have a gear leg bow for a Varieze for sale I figure it is worth $150.00 plus shipping. It has never been used. I can send a picture to those interested. Thankyou

If you have the turf cd. It should tell you the proper length and layup schedule. I do not have one but it is on my to own list. STeve

Bruce: Welcome to the addiction. I am into my Cozy IV build 11 months now. I have a fuselage to sit in and a canard to play with and by saturday I will have elevators to put on the canard. I use a ratio pump it is 23 years old I used it to build my first project I have never had it leave me with uncured epoxy. I think it is much faster than a level or a scale but they all work. If you want to finish this project try to work on it every day even if it is for a few minutes it will make a big difference. Have fun and dont get hung up on little things that dont matter. STeve

I think your work looks great. I wonder if you could hot wire the pvc foam if you wore a resperator and flushed the area of the gasses when done. I know that a hot wire will cut pvc foam but it is poisonous. STeve

There is a reason that blue wing foam is not used in the fuselage. Gas goes against the sides in the back. That means if you get a tiny little leak all your foam in your fuselage it basically melts. The foam in the sides of a plans built Longeze, cozy or any other properly built rutan derivitive does not melt when exsposed to fuel. my .02 STeve

I liked the looks of armpit scoops so that is what the plane had on it. When I flew it for the first 20 hours or so I had High oil temps. and high cyilinder head temp. on the front two cylinders. I tried moving the oil cooler around and tightening baffling. Did not have much success. I made a ramp out of wing foam and put it right in front of the scoops that did the trick it ran cool all the time after that. When you deviate from the plans always exspect some r & d I have several plan changes for my Cozy IV and I am sure I will have lots of r & d on them also.

Sorry to be misleading. I wrote the other post in a big hurry. I built most of my plane without a pilots license. When I got really close to being done I went out and took lessons in a good old Cessna 152 took me about 40 hours or so. Then I flew a little here and there in renters for about a year. Just before I flew my plane a friend from bracket airfield flew down and gave me about and hour back seat time and some approaches. I flew my plane a couple of day late felt really confident and of course it flew perfectly. I had to fly out of Corona CA. and Land at Chino Ca. The reason for that is another story. My motor was running hot so it was a very short but wonderful flight. I cannot describe the feeling of putting all that time and energy into a project and then going out to the airport lining it up with the run way pushing the throttle to the wall then rolling out and at 75 miles per hour pulling back on the stick and flying for the first time it is an awesome experience after 5 years of building. I am looking forward to doing it again with my cozy IV I am building. Happy trails STeve

I did not have a pilots license when I finished my longeze. I got a little back seat time witha friend and flew it my self. Who else to fly a plane that you built than yourself. Just my .02 STeve

I have a new update. I have decided to machine all of my own parts for the elevators. It is going to take me some extra time but save me a bunch of money. ( have to justify my machines in the shop) I cut the nc-2 inserts today. They were a little tricky but not to bad just a lot of set up. Here is a pic. I took the week off of work so I am getting lots done on the plane and playing with my grandkids. Steve:p

Well I have a update on my progress. I finished chapter 10 the main part of the canard today. I got up at 4:45 am and was pumping epoxy for the top spar cap by 5:00am. I finished at 1:00 pm. I had all the glass cut and the slot masked of the night before. Those strings that you have to pull out of the spar material are a real pain. ACS sent me a defective roll I had to pick a new loop to pull about every 2 feet. I was glad when that roll went away after my second layer. The other roll pulled out just fine. Now I am in the machining mode I am making all the metal parts for my elevators. STeve

I have found a couple of ways to save a few bucks. One is that instead of aircraft spruce I used Doug Fir I gave up a little weight but doug fir is stronger than sitka spruce. I figure the weight difference is minimal. You have to find a good clean board with the right amount of rings per inch. I also found a place on North Carolina that sells bid fiberglass in 50" rolls They also sell uni a little cheaper there web site is. http://www.thayercraft.com/index.html On metals I have spent a lot of time looking for other suppliers and acs is hard to beat for small lot orders. I have not spent a lot of time looking for aircraft grade hardware it is just easy to add it to a big order when I order epoxy or foam. I looked into using the dow corning billets for making docks and decided I would not save that much money by the time I cut it into the proper dimensions. I appreciate anyone who finds a cheaper place to get materials and lets us all know about it. That is how I found out about Thayercraft. Keep up the good ideas. STeve

It is about time I updated this thread. I just finished glassing my shear web on my canard. It took 4 hours I did the work like I always do by my self. I did get help from my 14 year old nephew to cut the cores. I am also concurently working on chapter 9 doing the layups in the first part of the chapt. I will order My landing gear as soon as a customer pays me for some welding work I did last week.

Jon: If you need it to get warmer in the garage. Get a heater and force it to get warm. I have a wood stove and a Propane furnace. I generally only have to heat it in the morning now it stays pretty warm the rest of the day. STeve

Here is a picture of how I stored the fuselage after I finished it. I only left it this way until I got the shop swept up. Boy do I have a dusty mess. Jon asked if I would do anything different. I have decided to do a remote fuel valve above the main gear. I have not added it yet I will wait and see where I have room about the gear mounting. I would not of tried in the very begining to to the poor mans vacume bagging It left me with some huge bubbles that I had to repair. It is fixed properly but does not match the rest of the better work. I am going to do chapt. 8 next then on to the cannard. STeve

Well the big day has come and I am now a fuselage owner. I finished chapt. 7 this afternoon with a nice 5 hour layup on the right hand side of the fuselage. I will probably do chapt 8 next and then skip to chapt. 9 and start on the cannard. I now have to go through the pain of ordering more material. I have plenty of epoxy due to the fact wicks double shipped my epoxy. I have aprox. 15 gallons on hand. Maybe enough to finish. Weather is getting warme I am burning less wood now. STeve:D

I put a nav antenna you can see it in the picture in the front I have a lead weight holding down a wood block so there would not be a lump where the coax come through. STeve My project is an addiction it is all I think about and all I want to do. STeve

I glassed the bottom of my fuselage today. Took a total of 7 hours except for help in laying out the fiberglass I did it all by my lonesome. Hear is what it looks like

I just had a computor learning moment I figured out how to contro the size of my photos I think. Pretty good for a working stiff that never had a computor till after he built his first plane. STeve

Phil: The reason behind my madness is that I contoured my entire naca duct and the aft end of my plane all at the same time. I will take the gear leg cover off next time I work on the plane and set it aside until I install my gear. I thought I would get better transitions shaping it all at once. STeve PS.. I will post the picture one more time but I dont know how to make it any larger. STeve