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. 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. 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.
Kit production commenced in June 1978 and by the late 1990s over 3,000 single and two seater kits had been produced and sold.
Read more about this topic: Rutan Quickie
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