Welcome to Steve's Plane
Contact Details : moc.liamtoh|wem_evets#moc.liamtoh|wem_evets 0433445959
Hi my name is Steve Mew and I am a member of SAAA Chapter 15 based in Brisbane. This is a little webpage about my aeroplane project that I am currently working on. It's a Cozy MK IV (#1559) and one day hopefully it will look something like this :
The Cozy Mark IV is a 4-place, single engine, homebuilt light aircraft designed by Nat Puffer. The aircraft is constructed from foam and fiberglass and can cruise at 180 - 190 knots (200+ with retractable gear ). It has also gone to some pretty extreme limits. Chris Van Hoof in South Africa took his Cozy to 28,195 feet @ 100 feet per min on the VSI at top of climb with an IO-360. The Cozy Mark IV is constructed from materials such as Divinycell, blue styrofoam, polyurethane foam and fiberglass (RA7715 and RA7725), MGS L285 and MGS L335 epoxy systems or EZ-Poxy. The builder does not need pre-fabricated items to finish the aircraft except for the landing gear bow and nose gear strut which require forms and an oven for post curing, but several suppliers exist for these parts.
The Cozy is not just similar to the Rutan Long-EZ, but is a widened derivative of that aircraft, designed with blessings from Burt Rutan. Like the EZ, it is usually built with a retractable nose gear and fixed main gear. Also like the EZ, they often are parked in the lowered front position known as grazing. Some Cozy's are built with retractable main gear as well; this is a modification that offers performance benefits, including gaining a few knots more to the top speed although maximum wing fuel tank capacity is reduced to accommodate the retracted gear. The Cozy Mark IV has a plans maximum gross weight of 2050 lb and cruises at 170 knots (~200 statute mph). Nat Puffer designed the aircraft as a high speed cross-country VFR aircraft, although many equip their planes with IFR capabilities.
The plans call for a Lycoming O-360 engine (180 hp) or O-320 (150-160 HP). There are Cozys flying with several different engine types: Lycoming IO-360, Superior engines, auto conversions like Mazda 13B rotary, Subaru and T-58 turbine.
I have geared up my workshop for glass and foam work and have completed the first construction chapter (CH4). Not much to show for it so far apart from a few bulkheads but am finally pleased to be building. Suprisingly I discovered it took an incredible amount of time by hand to build these flat components due to the complex curves and the various odd geometries. I now am starting to get an idea where 2000-3000 man hours comes from to build one of these things…. I wanted to shave some hours off so I got completely sidetracked and started building a CNC machine instead. I am now probably looking at 3500 hours ;) I am glad to say that after 6 months of very little progress (a job change, CPL exams, various work courses, blah blah excuses) the CNC prototype is complete and working..
The CNC design was taken from the instructables web site.I had to modify it heavilly to allow for of the shelf components from Bunnings. I replaced chain and belt drives with threaded rod and have to say it works quite well. See this link : Click Here for the Cheap CNC Plans
Mark Zeitlin, another Cozy MK IV builder has gone through the painful task of converting a lot of the Cozy MK IV plans into CAD files. What a useful chap ! Click Here for Marks Cozy MK IV CAD Files
So my current plan is to use the CNC prototype machine to build a larger foam cutting CNC machine that can take the bed size of the Cozy Mark IV parts. I will then use Marks CAD files to crank out a Cozy MKIV…
Anyway for chapter by chapter progress see my Chapter links and please feel free to contact me…
Steve's Chapter by Chapter Progress (And other stuff too)
