For your first flight, you will need to do whatever your insurance requires for you to be covered. When I sold my Longez, the buyer's (no previous canard or complex time) insurance required 10 hours of dual with me. I interpreted that as 5 hours with him in the back and 5 hours with me in back before he soloed.
When I bought my Cozy, my insurance company required a fam check out only.
Learning on a long runway is a good thing to do. These planes eat up more runway than spam cans. Go easy on the brakes---they can fade if you overheat them---I have done it once. High gross wt at a high and hot runway (Tuscan). Did a "normal" landing on a huge runway (had to throttle back up just to get off of it----should have been better not using so much brake). Then taxiied a LONG way to the ramp---dragging a brake to steer of course. By the time I go to the ramp, my right brake had enough. Luckily I was at low speed and the plane whipped around the one brake that grabbed. After it cooled off, it was good to go.
If you find yourself in a no brake situation---consider raising the nose gear.
Also, when you buy your EZ, make sure the gear leg is protected (per CPs) from the brake heat----so you do not melt it during heavy braking. There should not be any EZs without this mod---but you never know. Besides, before you start flying a new EZ, you will want to know the current condition of the tires and brakes----so when you take off the wheelpants, you will see everything that you will need to see.
One more consideration for brakes----and going off the side of the runway. Ezs have lost their nose and main gear by going off the edge of the runway----usually by a loss of at least one brake----and a crosswind. Raising the nose gear may stop you fast enough. The other consideration it to make sure you land with the crosswind coming from the same side as the failed brake (plane wants to weathervane in----and you need opposite brake to compensate). How do you know you have a failed brake prior to landing? Stomp on the pedals prior to landing to make sure you have brake pressure. The bad brake will mush. However, sometimes it does not work that way. My brakes felt good prior to landing in Knoxville. As I started to roll out, the slave cylinder on the right brake failed and spurted all the fluid out. Luckily, in this case, the wind was also from the right----and Knoxville has a long runway---so I was able to use only one brake to stop the plane and exit to the taxiway on the left side of the runway. But when I was on the taxiway heading the opposite direction (now wind from the otherside), I could no longer maintain a straight track----had to shutdown and push ~6000ft or so----with COP escort of course----and airline pilots giving me funny looks.
Luckily, I had a slave cylinder O-ring with me. Just had to borrow some fluid and a pump from someone---then I was off and running
