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Jim Cullen’s

Born Again Cozy Builders Club

Welcome!

You might well ask…

Why the name?  Born Again Cozy Builders Club?

Well, it’s like this.  Carolyn and I started building a Cozy Mark IV aircraft on September 3, 1991.  We were making fine progress, too.  We had the fuselage on its gear, the canard and centersection spar were built, the wings were almost done and we were working on the canopy when disaster struck.  Jim developed a severe allergic reaction to the epoxy we were using.  He’d start coughing up green guck every time he did a lay-up.  It wasn’t long before the Cozy got relegated to the back corner of the workshop.

Nat Puffer's Cozy Mark IVSnoopy -- N41197 -- our 1974 Piper Cherokee Archer -- and her owner.

In the meantime, we bought Snoopy (N41197) — a 1974 Piper Cherokee Archer — and, with the help of some great friends at Medallion Engines at North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT), we fixed her up to be a first-class spam can.  A Cozy, she isn’t — but we like her and still fly her all over the place.

After a five-year nightmare, we finally took possession of our 1340-square-foot T-hanger at KVGT.  Nightmare?  Let’s just say that it took Steve Wynn less time to build the new Wynn Resort and Casino than it took our prime contractor to construct our tin shed.  Anyway, we finally moved in, in January, 2006.  Snoopy had a home.

The new hanger allowed us to clean all of the old airplane parts out of our garage.  In the process, we moved all of the old Cozy parts into hanger storage.  Of course, this piqued our interest in finishing the aircraft when we saw that about 75 percent of the materials had already been purchased and about half the work was already done.  Maybe there was a new epoxy available that Jim wouldn’t react to.

As it turned out, there was.  MGS 285/286 is a wonderful material.  It has a low viscosity, so it’s easy to use when wetting out the fiberglass.  It has a long working time, so there’s no panic to get the work done — even on large layups when working by yourself.  It produces almost no odor and — the best part — seems to cause no allergic reaction as long as proper personal protection is used (butyl rubber gloves and an organic vapor mask).

On January 2, 2006, we started building our dream-plane again.  We didn’t use much of the old aircraft — except as a guide for what we had done right and what we had done wrong.  In addition, so many builders had devised improvements, modifications, and simpler construction techniques in the intervening 15 years that we wanted to take advantage of all of the genius that our predecessors had devised.  So, we started from scratch.

The buttons in the upper left will lead you thru the whole story — at least, as far as we have gotten.  There are 26 Chapters in the construction manual.  Check the buttons and you’ll quickly see how we’re progressing.

No project like this happens in a vacuum.  We owe a lot of thanks to a lot of people.  Check our links page to meet some of them, check out their projects or flying aircraft, and to learn more about building your own Cozy.

Our Motto:  Third Time's the Charm