A Little History
The Cozy Mk4 is a single engine, four-place aircraft constructed with composite materials. The building technique - moldless composite construction was advanced by Burt Rutan and Mike Melvill in the 70's. Rutan designed many aircraft in his long career, including the LongEZ, Voyager, and SpaceShipOne . The Voyager flew around the world non-stop in 9 days in 1986 with Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager at the controls, and more recently, in 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded manned aircraft to enter space making its pilot Mike Melvill the first "civilian" astronaut. The LongEZ, a popular home-built two-seat aircraft was the basis for the design of the Cozy Mk4 by Nat Puffer.
During the 1980's, Nat Puffer used the LongEZ as a starting point for his design of a three-place Cozy, and later designed a four-place version. The Cozy Mk4 is constructed according to Puffer's plans using raw materials like fiberglass, foam, epoxy resins, wood, aluminum, and steel which are obtained from various suppliers. The project typically takes four or more years to complete.
The standard engine is a 180 HP Lycoming O-360, and it's mounted in the rear of the aircraft. Control surfaces are located on the canard, winglets, and wings. The plane is equipped with a landing brake on the belly. The main gear is fixed, but the nose gear retracts for flight, or for parking. I plan to install a 13B Rotary Engine and fully retractable gears.