2013
Canards West
Event and Program Schedule

• 3:00 P.M. Participants begin arriving
• 5:00 P.M. Meet in airport terminal parking lot
• 5:15 P.M. Walk to town for a no-host dinner

• Wandering around the planes & talking to Canard enthusiasts

• 12:30 P.M.: Lunch


• 1:30 P.M. Presentation:
  • "Flying a Cozy to Alaska"

    by Jorgen (Jay) Skovbjerg



• 3:00 P.M. Presentation:
  • "Melvill and Dick Rutan Around the World Flight"

    by Mike Melvill



• 4:30 P.M. Presentation:
  • "Holy Crap - you actually have been FLYING that thing? - What you should care about from a safety standpoint when building your airplane, and what a buyer should check when purchasing a previously built canard aircraft"

    by Marc Zeitlin

• 8:20 P.M. Movie:
• Battle of Britain (Click on picture for the movie trailer)


Forget the stars, watch the skies. It wasn’t Michael Caine, Susannah York and Laurence Olivier who made the film The Battle of Britain truly special when it was released 40 years ago this September – it was the battles in the air. The scenes in which duels for supremacy are fought over the garden of England offer a unique, kinetic ballet of whirling aircraft, their white contrails and black, oily smoke turning the sky into a giant animated Paul Nash painting. All against William Walton’s thrilling music.

Excerpted from "The Telegraph" newspaper. The entire synopsis may be read by clicking on this line.

• Morning: Wandering around the planes and talking to Canard enthusiasts


• 7:00 A.M. Meet in airport terminal parking lot to walk to breakfast


• Noon: End of the 2013 Canards West

"Flying a Cozy to Alaska"

By Jorgen (Jay) Skovbjerg

A slide show and narrative of Jay's flight to/from Alaska.

"Melvill and Dick Rutan Around the World Flight"

By Mike Melvill

In 1997 Dick Rutan and Mike Melvill flew around the world in two Long-EZ aircraft that each had constructed, with some legs of the trip extending over 14 hrs. in length.

"Holy Crap - you actually have been FLYING that thing? - What you should care about from a safety standpoint when building your airplane, and what a buyer should check when purchasing a previously built canard aircraft"

by Marc Zeitlin

Mr. Zeitlin will discuss safety issues and potential safety issues found while performing inspections and Condition Inspection (CI) on numerous composite canard aircraft. He will discuss pitfalls and gotchas when purchasing a flying (or non-flying) aircraft - what to look for, what to worry about, how to ensure a complete pre-buy inspection or CI. Question/comments will be welcome. A frank discussion regarding how to improve the build/repair quality will be welcomed.

A little about Jorgen (Jay) Skovbjerg:

Jay is a long time Cozy builder and Flyer. He has a very fast O-320 Cozy III and has participated in the R.A.C.E. events at Kanab many times.

A little about Mike Melvill:

Melvill achieved the distinction of becoming the first commercial astronaut in 2004 as the pilot of SpaceShipOne. Melvill has flown the first flights of ten of Rutan's aircraft. Melvill also helped develop the release mechanism for SpaceShipOne. He was the vice president and general manager of Scaled Composites, LLC; he has 25 years of experience as a test pilot, and has logged nearly 7600 hours in over 130 types of aircraft; he retired in October 2007.

A little about Marc Zeitlin:

For 6.5 years, Marc worked on cutting edge (and some not-so-cutting edge) aeronautical engineering projects for Scaled Composites. For three of those years, he managed rocket motor development for the Spaceship 2 program, which has led to the first powered flight in April of this year. Marc later worked for a year at Icon Aircraft as Lead Systems Engineer, with responsibility for all non-structural aircraft systems on the A5 LSA aircraft, currently under development. He currently is the president of Burnside Aerospace and is affiliated with Freeflight Composites, and performs engineering consulting as well as A&P services for composite aircraft. Marc has built two experimental aircraft (a Quickie Q2 and a COZY MKIV, currently with over 940 hours) and is a licensed A&P mechanic and an EAA Technical Advisor.