From Nats Cozy Newsletters
and the Unofficial Cozy Builders Web Site
Cozy Flyer's Reports 2004
Newsletter# 85 / April 2004
Builders, 3/7/04
So new England managed to squeeze one beautiful day in
between a bunch of ugly ones. It was mid-40s, with scattered
clouds and 75 – 100 mile visibility today. I took the opportunity
(after insuring last week that the White Mountains of NH hadn’t
moved anywhere) to check on the relative locations of both
Connecticut and Maine. I flew from Fitchburg, MA down to
Windham (a 20 minute flight) to pick up Chad Robinson (mailing
list member and new Cozy MKIV builder, working on Chapter 4,
IIRC).
Chad not only has never flown in a Cozy before, but he’d
never seen one, nor had he ever flown in a small aircraft before.
Talk about building on faith, eh? After moving the ballast to the
back seat and letting Chad take a few pictures, we loaded up and
took off, heading northeast back through MA, across the coast of
NH, and up into Maine, to Sanford. Along the way I let Chad fly,
although he'd’never flown anything other than a PC based
simulator. He noted that the Long EZ model in X-plane doesn't
match the Cozy MKIV very well. The pitch sensitivity is off.
Considering that he'd never flown before, he had very little
problem staying on course and altitude.
So we were heading up to Sanford to visit a prospective Cozy
builder named Antony Parchment (and his brother). Antony is a
pilot, now renting, who’s looking to build something. He’d
already gotten a ride in a Lancair Legacy, and was interested in
the Cozy as well. We had some breakfast in the nice restaurant on
the field, and then loaded the four of us into the plane. Fully
loaded, we were at about 2120 lbs. (my gross weight is 2150 lbs.)
with about 380 lbs in the front seat. We were just about in the
middle of the CG range. We headed out on a sightseeing cruise up
to Sebago Lake, and even at that weight were seeing about 1000
fpm climb rates. We could easily see the bulk of Mt. Washington,
about 75 miles away in northern NH. It was still in the same place.
I let Antony fly the plane, and he also had no major problem
keeping us on course and on altitude. I throttled back and Antony
flew the plane down to stall buck at about 82 mph (at that high
weight). He was very impressed with the flying qualities of the
plane, especially at stall speeds. After 15 minutes he was saying
that he loved the plane, and it was much nicer than the Legacy :-)
The second landing at SFM was probably my best one ever in the
Cozy. I didn’t even feel the wheels touch the runway. Every once
in a while you get lucky, I guess.
After landing at SFM and dropping Antony and his brother off,
Chad and I headed back to IJD, on autopilot with Frank Zappa
playing on the stereo. An easy flight; we saw no planes the whole
way back. I dropped Chad off, put all the ballast back in the nose,
and headed back to FIT. It was time to call it a day, so that’s what
I called it.
We now have one more VERY motivated builder, and one guy
who’s probably going to be buying plans soon. I want my royalty
check ..
Marc Zeitlin
Acton, MA