Mike's Quickie Q-200 1998

 

I finished my Quickie Q-200 in July of 1985. It took a year and a half to build it, 1500 hours. I think I have one of the fastest built airplanes, anyone beat me? I spent at least 3 hours a day and most of the weekend building it over that 1.5 year period. Its first flight was in July 1985. I asked a friend of mine George Read to test fly it because I was a green Cessna 150 pilot with 50 hours TT under my belt, definitely not qualified to test fly a screamer like the Q-200. George had thousands of hours of tail dragger time in numerous homebuilts, although none with the performance of the Quickie. We tailored the plane up to Brooksville Florida, with its 200' wide x 7000' long strip. The wind was good, the weather was clear and hot (90F) and everything was a go. George taxied to the end, we had a chase car on the parallel taxiway planning on following along. George fire walled it, left the chase car in the dust, started climbing like a homesick angel. At 2000 ' he leveled out and reported a left wing heavy condition and oil temps heading into the red. He had hit 180mph on downwind and slowed to 120 for a landing. Flaring out over the numbers he floated the whole length of that 7000' runway. His next try was at 90 mph and made a fine landing and rollout.

After adding an oil cooler and adjusting the elevator to correct for the heavy wing condition everything was working well. George took the plane to 230 mph to check for flutter and later flew around the local area. He reported that the cabin was real hot from the bubble canopy (greenhouse) and the limited air flow into the cabin, so we opened up the air intakes some.
Wow those 12 inch N numbers are ugly. But back to my story. After a few flights George took me up to familiarize me with the controls and some characteristics. Bill Buston, Harry Fletcher, and George had checked me out in three other, low performance tail draggers and I did ok. And I had been practicing with a Cessna 150 doing approaches at full power 120 mph into the flair to get used to the speed (bet the control tower at PIE thought I was nuts). Now it was my turn to fly my bird. I taxied onto the runway slowly advanced the throttle to the firewall, and was off in a flash.

Climbing out at 120 mph and 2000 feet per minute climb I was at traffic pattern altitude on crosswind (for you non-pilots that means my first left turn). Now I remember thinking to my self, that wasn't too hard but now I got to land the thing, better fly around awhile first. I'm 5'10 1/2 " tall and 140 pounds if that gives you any idea as to the size of the airplane. Its wing span is 16'8" so we're not real big. Actually a cruse missile is about this size... anyway back to the story, where was I? Oh ya, getting ready to land, I remember George saying to use 90 mph final, I did and flared out over the numbers, floated awhile and made a nice soft landing, and a straight rollout (for you non-tail dragger pilots, tail draggers don't like going straight).

Man comb your hair!.. Anyway I flew most of the 40 hours that the FAA had assigned as a test period. I had moved back down to Albert Whitted (SPG) to finish the test flying. Just before I was done a Glasair on its test period crashed near the airport. He lost the flap control, had some engine problems and didn't make it back to the airport. In the crash he took down a palm tree 2 foot in diameter! The wing sliced it off just like a weed wacker. The wing was split down the leading edge but still attached to the airframe... unbelievable! Anyway the airport manager didn't want anymore of that so he threw me off the airport. He said that my next flight had to be one way, off the airport. Actually I would have been more upset and considered him a jerk but it turns out that after one more flight I was going to be signed off, blessed by mother Fed, and then no mere airport manager could then tell me what to do. My next flight was up to PIE where I had holy water sprinkled on the airplane by the local Feds. I'm no longer a test pilot!

Now 14 years later I have 900 or so hours on the airplane. Only two forced landings (one mag problem, one electrical), two ground loops on the runway (one due to bad brake and turbulence, one broken tail wheel from a grass field landing I shouldn't have done), and one ground loop on a taxiway (never did figure that one out). This is not bad for all the places I've been.  From Florida to the Bahamas, Key West, Wisconsin in the winter, NY, Mass, all over east of the Mississippi.

For you Long Eze guys. My friend, Talmadge had a O-235 powered Long Eze and we used to fly together. One day at Punta Gorda we took off as a flight and I was the leader. We took to the runway powered up side by side, I lifted off, he was still rolling down the runway, I climbed out and leveled off a 1000". Then I called Talmadge on the radio and asked where are you, are you still following me? He reported back that he had lost sight of me. So this last picture (above) is dedicated to you Eze drivers.


  Home