On May 22, 7:19*pm, Sliker wrote:
On Thu, 22 May 2008 15:02:03 -0700 (PDT), BobR

wrote:

I looked at the Velocity and the Cozy a long time ago before I started
on my project. *I loved the look of the planes but after getting an
opportunity to flying in a Velocity once, I am glad I decided on a
more traditional tractor design. *Nothing concrete to say against the
canards other than my personal preference. *I just didn't like the
ground handling and the transition to and from flight mode of the
canards.

True, most of the flight reports I read about the canards leave me not
so excited about the way they fly and handle. Nice flying qualities
sometimes seem to get forgotten. Several pilots that have flown the
Lancairs (2 seat versions) say they have a dead feel and not much fun
to fly. I've been building a Glasair for many years, and just a couple
of years ago I finally got to fly one. The ailerons were nice, but the
elevator felt kind of dead. Makes me want to keep the plane I have and
sell it when it's finished. *No one will talk about that subject much,
probably out of fear of making their planes hard to sell. But it's not
such *a great system to spend years on end building a plane, only to
find out it flies bad.

I have flown two versions of the Kis Cruiser which I am building and
found it to be a very predictable but not the most exciting plane to
fly. On the other hand, I wasn't really looking for an exciting plane
so much as a good cross country plane. Even at that, the performance
figures are good and it is not so large that it flys like a big boat
either. With homebuilts though, you may find measurable differences
in flying qualities between copies of the same aircraft. An example
can be found with different builders of the KIS. Some have determined
that they wanted more elevator control and added a couple of inches to
the trailing edge of their elevators.

I agree with you that spending years building only to find out the
plane you built is not the plane you expected is a very bad deal. I
know at least one RV-6 builder who spent years building a very
beautiful airplane. He put on about a dozen hours of the initial
flight testing and immediately put the plane up for sale. The
aircraft was everthing it was supposed to be but it scared the s__t
out of him and he went back to his Cub. Seemed that what he really
enjoyed flying was low and slow.