Rutan Quickie

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+

An original single-seat Rutan Quickie. This example is in the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.

The Quickie is a light single seat homebuilt aircraft designed by Burt Rutan and Tom Jewett. 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.

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. Over 2000 kits were sold before production ended.

Highly efficient, the Quickie and Q2 are of composite construction. 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.^{[citation needed]} 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,^{[citation needed]} although the trigear version avoids this danger.

Development

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. 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.

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.^{[citation needed]} The canard layout 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, although (not unlike flaperons and V-tails) the control linkages are somewhat complex.^{[citation needed]} The absence of separate landing gear reduces both weight and drag, such aggregated weight savings allowing a smaller engine and a smaller fuel tank.^{[citation needed]}

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.

Kit production commenced in June 1978 and by the late 1990s over 3,000 single and two seater kits had been produced and sold.

Variants

Rutan Model 49

The original concept design by Burt Rutan.

Rutan Model 54 Quickie

Prototype aircraft produced at the Rutan Aircraft Factory.

Quickie

The original model has one seat and is powered by an 18 horsepower (14 kW) engine

Quickie Q2

This two seater has a 64 horsepower (48 kW) Volkswagen air-cooled engine and can be constructed as a Tri-Q with tricycle rather than conventional landing gear.^{[citation needed]}

TriQ-200 with tricycle gear

Q200

This two seater model is faster than the Q2 with a 105 horsepower (78 kW) Continental O-200 engine and uses a different airfoil for the canard. It can also be constructed as a Tri-Q with tricycle rather than conventional landing gear.^{[citation needed]}

Aircraft on display

• Canada Aviation and Space Museum

Specifications (Quickie Q2)

Data from QuickieBuilders and Western Canada Aviation Museum

General characteristics

• Crew: one pilot
• Capacity: one passenger
• Length: 19 ft 10 in (6.05 m)
• Wingspan: 16 ft 8 in (5.08 m)
• Height: 4 ft 5 in (1.35 m)
• Wing area: 67 ft² (6.22 m²)
• Empty weight: 490 lb (222 kg)
• Useful load: 510 lb (231 kg)
• Max. takeoff weight: 1,000 lb (454 kg)
• Powerplant: 1 × Revmaster 2100-DQ converted auto-engine, 64 hp (47.7 kW) at 3,200 rpm

Performance

• Never exceed speed: 200 mph (322 km/h)
• Maximum speed: 180 mph (290 km/h)
• Cruise speed: 140 mph (225 km/h)
• Range: 550 mi (885 km)
• Rate of climb: 1,200 ft/min (6.10 m/s)

Gallery

• 

  Q2 in flight

• 

  Q2, canopy up

• 

  Q2, side view

• 

  typical Q2 builder-designed instrument panel

See also

• AMSOIL Racer
• Quickie Aircraft Corporation Free Enterprise
• Scaled Composites
  

Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era

• Viking Dragonfly
  

External links

• Original Quickie photo