CLUMSY: Long EZ

Having been a pilot for just over 10 yrs now, I have always wanted to own my own plane. Rewind to El Monte Airport circa 1996, I am training for my pilot’s license. It was a normal day at the field when over the public address system, which broadcasts the control tower’s communications with all aircraft in the airspace in and around the airport, a pilot inbound for landing announced that he was having a problem with the throttle on his airplane. He indicated that he either had to keep the plane’s throttle set either full on or completely off. There was no in between. If he set the throttle to off, the plane’s engine would quit. It is pretty hard to land a plane when the pilot cannot adjust the throttle as needed while flying an approach to landing. If the pilot were to cut the throttle and the engine died, he would have only one shot to make the landing and if he left the throttle on he would be going way too fast to land.

Well, I guess the pilot decided that he would keep the throttle on while doing “S-Turns” on final approach to landing to keep his speed down so when over the runway and the engine was cut off he would be going slowly enough to land.

While looking for the plane on final approach I saw was a small, sleek, jet fighter-looking airplane called a Long EZ and thought, “that’s the airplane I want!”

Fast forward to 2008, and at the prompting of a good friend, I reached out to an owner of one of these planes, who keeps it hanger’d at a local Tucson airport. I sent him an email asking if I could meet him to see his airplane and ask him some questions about it. He emailed me back the next day saying that would be fine with him and to tell him when I would be in town next. I told him that I would be there in a few days and he said to meet him at the airport that weekend. After calling him the night before I would meet him at the airport, he told me that he had room for a passenger for his flight to have lunch at a nearby airport the next day and needless to say I said I would love to ride in the back. You will find some pictures of the Marc’s plane and our flight that day below: