It is unusually cold here today. The morning was in the 40s. After breakfast its out to the flight line.

I took off the cowls of the plane and quickly a small crowd gathered around the plane checking it out. The day turned out to be windy and cool .

Over 65 canards showed up. Lots of new faces, lots of people asking all sorts of questions of me. Apparently I must be a sort of go-to kind of guy for tech stuff. Just call me Yoda. I really enjoy sharing what I have learned over the years.

Ed and and Sue Richards. Great firends.

The work I did on the bird turned out to be a BIG hit. This is one of a kind plane for sure and with a new paint job and interior, it will be show stopping LongEZ. It is the most technologically advanced LongEZ in the world and I am almost positive the fastest one in the world. I am glad I had the chance to work on it even though I cant wait to deliver it and move on to other projects. As much as I liked building her, I definitely I like wiring the best. Wiring in a plane is the brains and nervous system of the bird. After a plane is built ANYONE can fix the engine, and fuselage, but if the wiring is mess up you have MAJOR problems. One can spend endless hours trouble shooting the problem. Most can do good glass work, but I see very little outstanding wiring work. It is complex and mystifying to most. I find it challenging and artistic in some ways. If I ever work on a plane again for someone else I will ONLY do the wiring aspect of it. I’ll leave the engine and glass work to someone else

After lunch in the tent, I check out the plane flown by my cabin mates, Gram and Mary were late arriving in RR due to a radio issue. They asked me to check it out and found the radio connection had come loose from the panel because a wrong retaining ring was used. Why their mechanic or radio shop didn’t see this is beyond me. I did a quick field repair and life was good again. They can now use it on the way back to Texas.

Had a wonderful day with my friends. I love coming to this event because it is canard….only canards.

Well, I headed out to Rough River, KY for my airshow early this morning.

After washing the bird, I filed my IFR plan and took off, climbing to 4000 ft due to head winds. I had 40 kts on the nose.

After passing Columbia, had to climb to 8,000 ft with a 52 kt head wind to get across the Smokey Mountains. Yikes! I was cruising 180 kts plus yet my ground speed was about 126 kts. Wow, I had flown my plane I would have been going as fast as a car on the ground. It took about 3.5 hrs to get to RR which is close to 45 minutes longer than I had planned for.

After overflying the airport at 200 kts (just for fun), it was a smooth landing, parking the plane and chatting with people when I saw a Glass Air 3 take off. What a beautiful sounding engine. I assumed it must be a 6 cylinder Lycoming. The owner did a quick flyby when it happened. Weird popping sounds from the engine. He turned around on down wind, trying to make the airport, kept on going losing altitude and crashed. A huge fireball about .5 miles from the end of the runway. Crashed into a hotel. …more details…

You know, I was sort of numb to it. Watched the plane, saw it descend, knew it was going to crash, fireball.

Later that night, in bed thinking about it all I realized the reason it didnt have a visceral effect on my is that the fireball looked just like the fireballs you see at Oshkosh during the warbird re-enactment. Boom, fireball. Maybe too, I didnt know the guy, only saw the plane taxiing and was not emotionally connected.

He had built the plane and used a corvette engine it it (hence the smooth sound) and a funky redrive. Apparently the reduction drive decoupled the engine from the prop and he no thrust. I have never liked auto engines in plane and have NEVER seen a successful installation. Heavy, problem prone, troublesome. In almost all cases the builder eventually installs a Lycoming or Continental engine and begins to enjoy his plane. Why in the hell would you want to fly an experimental plane with a REALLY experimental engine? Isn’t one enough?

Off to dinner with friends and beer with my buddies. Life goes on.