| Quickie | |
|---|---|
| Quickie Q2 | |
| Role | amateur-built airplane |
| Manufacturer | Quickie Aircraft Corporation |
| Designer | Quickie: Burt Rutan, Tom Jewett Q2: Garry LeGare, Tom Jewett and Gene Sheehan |
| Status | kit production completed |
| Number built | 2000+ |
The Quickie is a light single seat homebuilt aircraft designed by Burt Rutan and Tom Jewett.[1] One of the dozens of unconventional aircraft penned by Rutan for the general aviation market, the original Quickie is Model 54 in Rutan’s design series.[2]
The Q2 is a two seater version in kit form designed by Canadian Garry LeGare and the founders of the Quickie Aircraft Corporation Tom Jewett, and Gene Sheehan.[3][4] Over 2000 kits were sold before production ended.
Highly efficient, the Quickie and Q2 are of composite construction.[3] Appearing at first glance to be a modified biplane or canard design, the Quickie is a tandem wing aircraft. The forward wing is technically a canard, fitted with elevators, but it provides about 60% of the lift. The aft wing serves as tailplane, although all pitch control comes from the forward canard. The Quickie is a taildragger with main wheels in the tips of the forward wing, obviating the need for separate landing gear. However, propeller clearance is limited and the Quickie is rather vulnerable to prop-strikes, although the trigear version avoids this danger.
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The Quickie was designed in 1977 by Burt Rutan, with the prototype construction commenced in August of that year. The design was frozen in January 1978.[3] The original aircraft was specified to use an Onan 18HP industrial 2-cylinder opposed air-cooled engine, but many other engines have been installed, including the Continental O-200, MidWest AE100 and Volkswagen.[2]
The Quickie has many novel features to promote efficiency of both construction and operation. The absence of a tailplane both reduces drag and allows the aft fuselage to be slender since it has less to support. The canard layout[5] provides positive lift from both pairs of wings, whereas a conventional tailplane supplies negative lift. Being sited much higher than the canard, the aft wing avoids being affected by its downwash. Combining elevators, ailerons and flaps into just one pair of control surfaces reduces drag,[6] although (not unlike flaperons and V-tails) the control linkages are somewhat complex. The absence of separate landing gear reduces both weight and drag, such aggregated weight savings allowing a smaller engine and a smaller fuel tank.
Rutan hoped that the Quickie would make an attractive and an exciting aircraft for a first-time homebuilder. He stated that the design was intended to echo the X-Wing of Star Wars, adding that the dual-wing with a single rudder layout was not new, having previously been used in aircraft such as the Flying Flea.[2]
Kit production commenced in June 1978 and by the late 1990s over 3,000 single and two seater kits had been produced and sold.[3]
Data from QuickieBuilders[7] and Western Canada Aviation Museum[8]
General characteristics
Performance
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