As you my know from previous articles (here and here) I am a little busy and was looking for a way to speed things along in the build process and make progress while I am working on my MBA. Dennis Oelman (Info in the Cozy Suppliers link to the left) is a serial builder and specifically works on Wings, Spars and Canards for other builders. I contacted him a while back and procured a canard from him. The workmanship is fantastic so my wife and I decided that we would also order a set of wings and a spar. This is a fantastic way for builders who are shorter on time than they'd like and are willing to trade a bit of money for some faster progress. A sort of "fast-build" starter kit for the Cozy IV.

Dennis and I had been talking for over a year and I had a set of wings on order for a January delivery for quite some time. When you order these things, he delivers them personally, towing them behind his red jeep. It's a pretty interesting and exciting feeling to watch these things show up like this for a number of reasons. First, you realize how much time savings they represent in the build process (at least for me). Second, you have a little bit of money tied up in them and you can't help but be excited about receiving them because of that. Heck, my wife was even waiting in excitement for them to show up. Now for her I am sure it's because it's January and we don't have a garage because of this project right now and she is thinking... "hmmm.... I may get my garage back yet!"

Anyway, on a snowy January morning, Dennis pulls up and behind him are my shiny new wings and spar! WoooooHooooo! They are strapped firmly to his trailer in a rigging configuration that is custom built to purpose.

After introductions and the ceremonial "Opening of the Garage Door" (an event that happens about twice a year right now) we reassessed the "rigging of the wings" for storage up out of the way in the garage in a place where hangar rash would not occur. I had planned to store them against the wall up near the ceiling with winglets hanging out of the way of most everything and had the rigging in place for this. A brief discussion triggered a quick trip to Lowe's (hardware store) and the timely purchase of a couple of bicycle hangars.

Upon our return I installed them in the ceilling near the wall. The intent was to get a bit of natural space between the wings while still having them against the wall. This would reduce hangar rash. Once this was done, it was time to unstrap the wings and bring them into the garage.

We brought them in, stepping over the custom built, protective box, that contains the canard and placed each wing on the table. I immediately tried to ding the trailing edge of one of the winglets against the open garage door, fortunately doing zero damage. While I drooled on my new wings, Dennis showed me all of the things that we discussed about them and more.

Dennis does great work, as I said before, and I knew this from the canard that I have, but it is clear from his wings that he really loves building and takes a ton of pride in his work. He showed me some of the small modifications that he made to accomodate tie-down hooks, flatten out the end of the wings so that lights will install there more easily, and many other things. We disussed the popular modification of internal bellhorns for the rudders (not installed here) and we both agreed that the modification isn't worth the time and doesn't really gain you any speed so why buck the Rutan's in their thinking of keeping it simple. so it will be left as designed.

Once all of that was done, these new wings were carefully rigged up and hung out of the way against the wall of my workshop where they will remain (hopefully unblemished) until the day of their fitting onto the fuselage of the aircraft.