bmckinney10

I believe most that have a battery in a VariEze have it installed in the nose. I added a starter to mine along with some other components in the engine area. The battery helps for balance. My battery sits on the flat parts of the NG30 nose gear supports. I have an aluminum strap that bolts into NG30 that wrap around the battery to secure it. I made an extension off that strap and mounted my ADS-B out TailBeacon to it. Yes, the ADS-B is INSIDE my fuselage and works great transmitting through the skins.

Looks great Owen! I am in the refurbishment stages of a Long-Ez with an O-290-D2. It had flown for 1200 hours when I bought it late last year but it needed some serious TLC. It is completely stripped down of all components right now and we are getting ready to flip it and sturdy up the landing gear assembly. Once done with that we are going to refinish the exterior. The engine will go back on with all new wiring, hoses, cooling, panel work, etc. Here's the link to my earlier posts: Looking forward to seeing your progress!

As of last night, there were 4 Long-Ezs, my VariEze, and a Defiant on Ez-Street. We met Rick Hall (Cozy) & Ray Parker (Long-Ez) in HBC, and another Cozy and a Stagger-Ez was there too. Ken Swain had his VariEze in the showplane parking area, and another Long-Ez near him. We spotted another Cozy rolling to the North 40. I am planning to capture pics of all we can find throughout the week.

Back to the Oshkosh topic... I flew in yesterday. This was the first time N40LC made it back to Oshkosh since 1988 when the building, Lynn Coltharp, flew it in.

I bought/installed the Fresno kit as well last year. The rubber is much harder than the Lord mounts. They are just using the standard Continental rubber mounts and including the other parts, but calling them Lord.

Yes, I have one with over 600 hours. I think you will find a large % of VariEze's were O-200A.

I had a work trip in TX this week at Ellington (KEFD). This is the home base for RAFE. Ryszard was out of town, but I connected with Richard Sessions (Cozy 3) who gave me a tour of the RAFE hangar and his hangar. Great to see several canards while on the road!

Many of you may already know this... Ryszard Zadow provided me some information for Oshkosh EZ parking. He indicated to go to "EZ Street" (make a sign), to park your EZ with others for display. It is located between the homebuilder building and warbirds. I attached a 2019 aerial pic of the location. Everyone bring your Ez and let's fill up that area. I will be arriving with my VariEze (N40LC) on Thursday the 22nd.

I was right about the same time in Cherokees and Cessnas when I flew my VariEze for the first time last November. I spent time in Covington,TN flying with Ryszard Zadow in the Speed Canard to learn. This was the best money spent in the entire process. I now have about 30 hours in the Varieze since November. So much fun to fly!

I had to remove my roll trim servo. The long side of the control horn broke off and I couldn't get enough throw from the short side. The center attaching screw would not come out. It just kept spinning and spinning. I had to split the control horn to remove it with the hopes that I would be able to use pliers to put some downward pressure on the screw while rotating. No luck. The servo was working great. It had been in place for 40+ years. As most know, the servo is embedded in the foam between the top and bottom skin layers. There is no quick way to remove/replace it. I had to perform some surgery to extract the servo. I have it out now. I am going to stick with the RC servo design, but I am going to make a removable cover to access it. I will post my update when completed.

Some weekend Long-Ez progress in removing the engine, remaining accessories, and wiring. This Ez has 30 years of tweaks and changes that created additional holes, wiring, and quick fixes. We will be patching up openings and cleaning up as we go. The Electroair ignition system shown is an original model from the early 90's. It still worked extremely well with a very smooth running O-290-D2 before we started the rework. The next step is removing the canopy and flipping it over to work on the main gear.

Hi Jake, are you based at KRST? I would love to connect and see your Ez. I am at KLVN.

Under $20K. Aside from less-than-desirable bodywork and paint, it had the electric nose lift, electric elevator trim, electric speed brake, ADSB-Out, Catco 3-blde prop, recent carb and mag overhauls. The former owner was a retiring A&P and documented all the work and upgrades very well. He was still actively flying it up until I bought it and put 1200 hours on it over 30 years. I found a few things that I discussed with him that were not show-stoppers, but I felt needed attention before I would be comfortable putting decent hours on it. The deals are out there if you can assess the condition well enough and be ready to buy. I know that the less-featured (& lower cost) Ez's get ALOT of tire-kickers. If I am fairly certain I am buying, I show up with the trailer and then negotiate based on findings. I am not an expert on inspecting, but confident enough to analyze if there are any major issues. I know that I will be doing a full strip-down when I get started. If I was looking at buying and immediately flying, I would go at it with different approach using the guys who do have the expertise to do a pre-buy (Marc Zeitlin, Robert Harris, etc.). These planes would probably be on a higher cost scale and may not need much work to continue flying. I purchased both of mine as projects, knowing I would be digging down deep and replacing/rebuilding a good portion of the systems and doing significant work on them. I was lucky in that both the VariEze and Long-Ez were very well documented, and I was able to talk directly with the original builders who had also put all the flying hours on them. You will be surprised where you find Ez's hiding. If you are at an airport, just start asking the older guys about them. Somebody will eventually know a guy who used to have one, etc. I have been at my airport for 13 years and NEVER saw an EZ there. Two months ago, I found a 250 hour Oshkosh award winning Cozy 3, that has sat un-flying for 20 years just two hangars away from mine. I found the owner who lives out of the country, have moved it to my hangar to clean it up and store it for him, and am now negotiating to buy it. The engine likely needs a rebuild, but the rest of the plane is in incredible condition. The picture below shows my VariEze and the Cozy.

Nothing unexpected yet. The previous owner (builder) gave me a pretty good rundown on how he built it. He had warned me before I even left Minnesota that it was not a cosmetic beauty. He indicated something along the lines of "they shouldn't let me near a paint gun...". It was pretty much what I had expected when I started digging into it. I had a couple of questions that I sent to Robert @ JetGuys with quick responses. We are going to strip it down in all aspects and build it back up. It'll be a good project for my son and I to go through from start to finish. Once completed, we will trailer it down to Covington and have Robert and the guys go through it.

After successfully working through my VariEze and getting it back into the air, I came across a Long-Ez for sale in Indiana. I took the trailer down in late November and picked up N24DJ. It was first flown in 1990 and had current hours in 2020. Total hours on the airframe and O-290-D2 is around 1200. It was not a cosmetically pleasing finish job, but it ran smooth and had some bonus extra features that made it worthwhile to take on as a project. I started on the interior this weekend,by removing the panel and a majority of the wiring. In the images below, you will see the previous owner had cut out a majority of the panel bulkhead and built a replacement panel. It had individual gauges for all the engine instrumentation, so all the CHT, EGT, temps, pressures, tach wires all ran from the back to the front. That is all gone now. I am going to rebuild the panel bulkhead and start over with a new panel layout and use the MGL Blaze setup as I did for the VariEze. I will retain the radio & transponder with ADSB out. The builder had also used the electronic circuit breaker system from Control Vision (EXP-2V). I am not sure if I will retain that or not. There were also a few manual circuit breakers on the armrest for the electric nose lift, pitch trim, and landing brake. The other tasks I am planning so far are: - pull the engine, and update the layout in the engine area - new baffle system - rework the cowlings - all new electrical wiring & panel rebuild - flip the fuse over to rework the main landing gear attachments - redo interior bodywork (sand old paint, repaint, new cushions) - complete exterior bodywork (sand old paint & filler, refill, sand, and paint) - new ELT This one will take a bit longer than the VariEze, but it will be a fun project. I am not planning any major upgrades or high-expense panel upgrades. I am looking to have a nice, basic Long-Ez when done. The images below are the trailer load, the panel after just starting the tear-out, and the panel after the tear-out.

Looks pretty clean Trevor! It looks very similar to mine. I see you have the B&C alternator there too. The plastic tube is for the tank vent lines. Mine had the same. They weren't cracked and were still flexible, so I kept mine. You may have to move your breather air/oil separator if you are going to add a starter. My separator was on the starter pad. I ended up putting the breather tube back on the original O-200 port (near the prop-end of the engine), but had to make one of those Aerobat-style extended tubes to keep oil from spitting out. I still have a thin skim of oil on the lower cowling after a flight, but I am not losing anything significant. I may figure out how to eventually add a separator back into the mix. I removed all the wiring from the front to the back. The original setup had the CHT/EGT, tach, oil pressure, temps, etc. all running to individual gauges in the panel in a decent-sized bundle. I installed the MGL Blaze with the remote I/O box. I mounted the I/O box right where your air/oil separator is located. All the engine monitoring (including tach pulse) is wired to that with a single 2-wire shield cable running to the panel. Cleaned up a lot and works great. You'll have fun working on that project!

My son and I have flown in several times in our Cherokee. We have a short 200nm trip from the Minneapolis area. We generally come in the Thursday or Friday before the show starts, so traffic is a non-event. My son is flying the Cherokee and I a flying the VariEze this year. He likes to camp with the Cherokee so he will be in the North 40. I prefer our camper that we also bring to Camp Scholler. I am going to check in with the EAA staff to see if they will be planning to set up a canard area in the Homebuilt parking area. I know they made changes in 2019 to the whole homebuilt area which seemed to allow for similar types to be parked near each other.

I am planning to bring my VariEze to Oshkosh this year. Although I have always looked at Ez's when attending, I have never thought to notice if there was a specific area that all the Ez's congregated. I think I remember years ago seeing an "EZ Street" sign in the homebuilt area when there were more of them attending. Where does everyone park? It would be great to see another few canard flybys/showcases as they did for Burt Rutan's visit in 2019. It was that week at Oshkosh that convinced me to start the search for my VariEze. Now I have the VariEze (N40LC), and am rebuilding a Long-Ez. I am also storing a Cozy 3 in my hangar for a guy. I caught the bug hard.

Marc has a wealth of knowledge. My son and I visited him last summer in Tehachapi. He was a great help for me to understand some of the key things on my VariEze before I got it back in the air. A fun fact is that he shares a hangar with Mike Melvill. We got to spend 30 minutes talking with Mike about many of his test flight experiences at Scaled Composites.

Hello Elliot, I am in Lakeville at Airlake, and have a flying VariEze and a Long-Ez getting refurbished. I am guessing you are looking at the New Richmond VariEze? The wx looks good for Saturday, so I will be at the airport and flying. Check out the posts I have for my VariEze, N40LC. I will send you a message with my contact info. Thanks, Brian

I talked to Eric in November about this VariEze. If I hadn't already been on my way to buy a Long-Ez in Indiana, I would have headed to Michigan to take a look at this one.

Find an existing VariEze (a flying version just appeared on Barnstormers today for $14.5k), do whatever cleanup/updates are needed and get in the air. I did this last year and have been enjoying every hour of flight. Awesome plane.

Weather was favorable in MN for a flight yesterday!

The original version (which I had) did interfere with my right leg. The rod pulled back about 8"-10", and then you would slide it over to the right side into a locked position. This would dig into my right thigh. A later revision (see CP14, page 7), introduced a spring loaded lock that eliminated the need to slide it to the right. This would be a good update if you are keeping the pushrod. I ended up installed the hand-crank worm-gear drive when I was at Covington in November. I had a brand new worm-gear unit still in the box, and it was a quick swap.

Hello! Mine is at the 142" length. The original builder modified it when the CP came out. I also have the cuffs on the wings. Flies great! My VariEze was repainted before I bought it, but the original paint was not removed. I added a starter and oil filter adapter to the O-200, and a few pounds in new wiring for the starter, etc. My empty weight (with oil in the engine) is at 712# with nose ballast for balance. I have only flown solo and it is quick to get off the ground and I can land short if needed. I am excited for spring to come to get more hours in each week. We have been in the teens and below in MN for the last 3-4 weeks. I don't have heat and the feet freeze up quick.