Long EZE

About

The Long-EZ is the work of Burt Rutan, the legendary American aerospace engineer whose Rutan Aircraft Factory in Mojave, California, produced a series of canard-pusher composite homebuilt designs that revolutionized the experimental-aircraft market in the late 1970s and 1980s. The Long-EZ was developed as a refinement of the earlier VariEze (1975), with a longer fuselage, improved canard, and the iconic shape that has become visual shorthand for "Burt Rutan design" in popular aviation culture. The Long-EZ first flew in 1979, with plans released to the homebuilt market shortly after.

The design philosophy behind the Long-EZ is unmistakable. A small canard surface mounted at the nose provides pitch control and stalls before the main wing — the canard arrangement that makes Rutan's designs essentially stall-proof in normal flight. The main wing is mounted aft, and the engine drives a pusher propeller behind the rear wing rather than the conventional tractor arrangement. Composite construction (foam-and-fiberglass) gives the airframe extreme aerodynamic cleanness and a remarkably efficient cruise — Long-EZs routinely cross the United States non-stop on a single tank of fuel, and the type is one of the fastest piston-single homebuilts in the cruise speed class.

Rutan's later designs — the VariEze, Long-EZ, Defiant, Voyager (which circumnavigated the globe non-stop in 1986), and SpaceShipOne (which won the Ansari X Prize in 2004) — all bear the visual signature of his canard-pusher composite style, and the Long-EZ is the most successful of his homebuilt designs by sheer numbers built. Hundreds of Long-EZs have been completed by amateur builders over the decades, and the type continues to fly active recreational and cross-country missions today.

The unmistakable Long-EZ silhouette — pusher prop, swept main wing, small canard at the nose, winglets at the wingtips — is one of the more distinctive scale subjects in modern RC scale flying.

In the simulator

A unique scale subject with handling that differs from any conventional fixed-wing model. The canard-pusher layout gives the Long-EZ in our sim its characteristic stall-resistant character — the canard stalls first, automatically dropping the nose before the main wing can stall. Use it for sport-scale flying with a distinctive visual signature: cross-country cruising, low-and-slow scenic legs, and the unhurried pattern that suits a long-distance homebuilt. Pairs well with grass strips and rural fields. A unique entry in any pack.