CozyWorld.net

I believe the postmark on my Cozy plans envelope says 1999.  Here it is early fall of 2006 and I've come back full circle.  Along the way, I bought the 'How To Build an Airplane' book (plans for the BD4) and assembled most of the empennage (tail section) of an RV9A.  What made me take this journey only to end up right where I started from (or should I say almost started from)?

When I bought the plans in 1999, I really wasn't going to start building right away.  I bought the plans because I thought the Cozy was a good design, met my flight requirements/expectations, but mostly I bought them because the desginer, Nat Puffer was in the middle of legal battles with another company.  It's a long story that I won't go into here.  I mention it only because at the time I'm wasn't sure that Nat would keep selling the plans to the Cozy.  I didn't want to get left out if the plans sales stopped.

I was interested enough to go to a couple of meetings of my then local EAA chapter (North Dallas - McKinney, Tx) where I met a really nice fellow by the name of Mike Pollock.  Mike was a Velocity pilot/builder that was also building a Cozy.  Mike had built and owned the Velocity with several other partners and she was a great bird.  Mike had me over to his shop and let me see his Cozy project.  Mike had a beautiful build with great craftsmanship.  I even got to do a tape lay-up.  I went over once or twice more to check out things.  It was great and I was really considering actually starting the build.  I had heard alot on the email news group about the cozyiness of the Cozy and before I started one I wanted to sit in one.

I should say here that in the beginning when I bought my plans the Cozy builder community wasn't as open minded about modifications to the design as they are now.  It amounted to sharpening the stakes and buildng up the fire.  I had never built anything before so this was going to be a major challenge and a massive education.  I should also mention that I'm a low time pilot and those hours that I do have are spread over decades.

One weekend Mike called us up and wanted to know if Jan and I wanted to go on one of those $100 hambuger rides in his Velocity.  We didn't even think twice.  We flew over to east Texas somewhere.  I can't even remember where.  I was struck with love - ok lust.  This Velocity was incredible.  Mike showed the 'stall' nose bob and I was sold.  Mike let me take the controls and I flew just as he had instructed, with the thumb and fore-finger on the stick.  Total control.  Nothing like the Cessna's or that old Citibra that I flew.  I'm not a macho, hanging upside down by my jock-strap type of guy.  I like straight and level.  When it comes to weather - I'm a coward.  Stability was critical.  So I kept poking around and studying.  I later met Dave Burtrum (sp?) installing the strakes on his Velocity and went over to Donald Hamm's place to check out his Velocity project.

Well Jan and I kicked it around and we decided to go to Oshkosh.  In 2001 we made plans to met her folks there.  Her dad, Bill was interested in a build project as well.  We had both always wanted to go to Oshkosh and this was to be our excuse.  I was the typical 'deer in the head light' first time Oshkosh visitor. 

The highlights of my visit were daily treks by the Velocity tent, the obligatory stop by Van's (I have a picture of Bill trying on the RV9) and more aircraft than I can remember.  I also met Nat and saw his Cozy.  I met Steve Wright who was busy showing me Greg Richter's then mazda powered Cozy III complete with that incredible BMA EFIS he was sellig in his tent.  I took all kinds of pictures of Greg's bird.  Greg later comment that I had better pictures of his bird than he did!  Oh well back to the story...

After Oshkosh, Jan and I tried everything we could and the damn calculator just couldn't figure out a way to make the Velocity kit work with our budget.   I looked at the BD4 at Oshkosh but decided that for some reason that bird wasn't for me.  The more we thought about it the more we started leaning towards a Van's RV9.  There was a large support community in the local area of RV builders (try to find an airport anywhere in the continental US that doens't have at least one).  Classes were availalbe for learning metal work on an RV intro kit via George and Becky Orendorff at GBI north of Fort Worth.  We bought about $2,000 worth of tools, took George and Becky's class and soon we were on the way to building our RV9.  You can see our process on the empannage kit at my old web site.

While we were busy pounding rivets rumors of the RV10 were circulating.  I still wanted the extra load carrying capability of a four passenger.  We like to travel, play golf and were aren't necessarily light packers of luggage.  I decided to stall or slow down the building of the RV9 until Van had firmed up the pricing on the RV10 kit.  I was hoping that he would just have more kits at the $5K price point.  It didn't turn out that way and once again the four passenger/load carrying had to take a back seat (in someone else's plane).

Then life took another turn and our opportunity to return to New Mexico came.  This time we moved to Santa Fe, Jan's old home town.  I was able to tele-commute my old job for a year to help the transisiton and Jan had found a challenging job as well.  The first thing that hit us was the incredible beauty and uniquiness of Santa Fe.  The next thing was the incredibly high price of housing (especially after coming form the Dallas market).  Plane building really went on hold while we settled in and adjusted to our new life style.

Earlier this year (late spring) I again found myself thinking about building an airplane.  Van's kits had now risen from the ~$5k sub-kit prices to $6K.  That wasn't likely to be workable for us within the structure of our new environment.  I grabbed the Cozy plans off of the top of the bookshelf and started going through them again.  I found some great resources on the web, even more than what I knew about the first time.  Creative & interesting things were being done and people weren't (always) burned at the stake for thinking out loud about some of the mods. [I should note here that sure there are some that are emotional about this or that but most of the concerns raised are rational, intelligent and knowledgeable people using critical thinking to espouse them.  In short they are issues that should be thought about before proceeding].

I still had my epoxy pump that Mike had quietly suggested to Jan "would make a great Christmas gift".  I could buy what ever I could afford in foam and fiberglass when I could afford it and press ahead in chuncks of hundreds of dollars instead of thousands.  I knew that when it came time to install an engine and then stuff the instrument panel, I'd have the same issues financially with any aircraft.  I joined the Central States Assocation (CSA) and soon became the New Mexico state representative.  Then I met Lloyd Gimple in Albuquerque, NM that had built and was flying a Cozy MK IV. Lloyd has a beautiful 200 hp Cozy built to plans with the electric speed brake and nose retract.  Lloyd spent 4 (probably very long for him) hours with us answering our questions and letting us set in his bird.  It turns out that Lloyd's plans number was less than 10 from mine!

Needless to say we were convinced this was the new direction to take.

You can follow our build on the on the rest of the pages of this website.

Oh and by the way, for a real taste of irony, if you look close on Nat's official Cozy web site on the 'Why Build a Cozy' link, you'll find some comments I made to the email newsgroup.  Well, I guess it's time I take my own advice - and start building!

I went back and forth.  Do we start with the practice piece and use some of my Chapter 4 & 5 supplies for Chapter 3 or do we just dive in and do Chapter 4 right off the bat?

We decided to start with Chapter 3 and see what happens.  Jan set out to cut out our the glass for the first Chapter 3 piece - the glass panel.  First she cut out a pattern the correct size out of newspaper and proceeded to cut the required number of glass squares for the layups.

Of course she did have some help from Gumbo...

I wonder what this tastes like and who is that coming in to help Gumbo?

Why it's his sister Beignet!  This is fun!

We had a roll of plastic wrap left over from our move (man did this come in handy).  You can find this at U-Haul and other self move centers.  We're using the Cozy Girrrls LoVac system.  This requires a layer of plastic wrap on the bottom.

Plastic on the bottom, do the layup, add a layer of peel-ply, about three layers of paper towels and add plastic on the top.  The black hose snaking down is the coming from the vacuum pump.  This is now ready to cure.  NOTE:  This was our first time at doing anything.  The lay-up, Lo-Vac, etc are all new to us.  We probably should have weighed this down.

Additionally, while we were able to document each step along the way of our RV build process this will be somewhat more challenging.  You get the gloves on start slapping epoxy on the glass and before you know it the layup is complete.  I'd really need to take off the gloves to use the camera (I can't see getting the camera covered in epoxy).  This picture taking and documenting will take some practice.  This is another angle of the layup.

Here's a little bit better picture of the Lo-Vac pump.  I eventually had to rearrage it so that I could use a fan to blow on it to keep it cool.  Of course this being our first attempt at it I actually left the pump on for 4 hours.  One would have done it.

I decided to bulid a heat tent over the part.   Nothing fancy but this worked really well.  There's a heater under the table.  The temp on top of the table stayed at over 100 degrees.  You can see that this isn't sealed by any means but heat rises so the temps stayed up.  I actually left vent holes on the side so it wouldn't get too hot.

When we started building our RV9 our garage was bigger, I had installed 8 foot high-ouput florescent lights, had hung peg board on the walls, put in 30 amp service on each wall of the garage, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da. 

Now our garage is smaller; the lighting at best is weak, the electircal service is normal.  I'll have to up-grade as I go if I ever want to get started.  Let's there's the lighting, paint the walls, put up peg board, add new electrical circuits...

The there are these florescents mounted on the wall - what's with that???

Of course Jan's Porsche still must have some room - I guess my bimmer will stay outside...

We got really lucky when it came to building the work table.  First off, I was amazed at how many people build a three hundred pound gorilla table that takes a fork lift to move.  My back just wasn't up to the task.  I decided I was going to use aluminum framing with plywood on the top.  It would still be heavy but it should allow me to move it around without putting my back on pain killers for a week.

But wait... Jan's dad, Bill had started a builders table for a project he was going to build.  He decided not to pursue that project and this table was just sitting in his garage taking up space.  We of course were really happy when he let us use it!  Talk about a well built project table!  Here I'm letting Jan rest up before we start tackling putting together the table.

Here's Jan counter-sinking some of the table top screws.