Rutan Quickie

Quickie
Quickie in the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
Role	Single seat aircraft
Manufacturer	Homebuilt aircraft
Designer	Burt Rutan, Tom Jewett, Gene Sheehan
Status	kit production completed
Number built	350+
Variants	QAC Quickie Q2 Viking Dragonfly

The Rutan Quickie is a lightweight single-seat taildragger aircraft of composite construction, configured with tandem wings.

The Quickie was primarily designed by Burt Rutan as a low-powered, highly efficient kit-plane. Its tandem wing design has one anhedral forward wing and one slightly larger dihedral rear wing. The forward wing has full-span control surfaces and is thus not dissimilar to a canard wing, but is considerably larger. The aircraft has unusual landing gear, with the main wheels located at the tips of the forward wing.

The Quickie Aircraft Corporation was formed to produce and market the Quickie in kit form after 1978. Two years later a two-seater variant of the same layout followed as the Q2. The original Quickie (Model 54 in Rutan’s design series) is one of several unconventional aircraft penned by Rutan for the general aviation market.

The Quickie followed from Jewett and Sheehan's intention in 1975 for a low-cost, low-power, single-seat homebuilt aircraft. The first element to be found by Jewett and Sheehan was the engine, which – although low-powered (they had anticipated 12 hp) – had to be reliable for aviation work. With the help of Onan, a manufacturer of industrial four-stroke engines, they were able to procure a 70 lb (32 kg) engine that would deliver 18 hp (14 kW) at 3,600 rpm.

Rutan was then involved with the design; Sheehan and Jewett suggesting a scaled-down Vari-Eze. After a preliminary pusher canard configuration design (Rutan Model 49) had been discarded, his solution to the design issues of low drag without retractable undercarriage and a workable centre of gravity travel, was a tractor engine/tandem wing layout., Conversely to canard layout, the conventional front engine location put the pilot close to the centre of gravity, a key point for a light aircraft. The wheels were incorporated into wingtip fairings without much drag penalty and the tandem layout gave safe stalling characteristics. Rutan produced the first drawings in May 1977 and thereafter the three of them worked on the design drawings over the next two months with construction beginning in August After the first flights, Rutan spent more time with his Defiant design and other projects, and it was Jewett and Sheehan who continued development of the design and market it for home-build use. An agreement was reached that Rutan would fund the development and testing and once the design was complete they would pay Rutan back from future sales of the designs and kits.

...
Wikipedia