U.S. Aviator magazine

Easy Is... As Easy Does... Merlin's Sweet but Lively EZ-Flyer II

Back to Basics... that would seem to be the motto boasted by Merlin's latest prodigy, an unashamed Breezy knock-off that seems to have bettered its parentage by a bit. In an aviation industry cluttered with turbochargers, EFIS avionics, GPS, advanced composites, and airplanes with the kind of compound curves that would seem more at home on Elle McPherson than a flying machine, the new Merlin EZ-Flyer is about as anti-modern as aviation gets. And... that, my friends, is why I enjoyed this beast so much.

If you want Mach Two, 2000-fpm climb rates, or 360-degree roll rates, you best wait up for my next flight report... because this just ain't it -- not by a long shot.

Okay, here's something completely different from the Merlin, normally known for high-wing, roomy cabin, side-by-side, two-seaters... this is a quasi-ultralight two-seater with exceptionally benign manners. Looking a bit like an ultralight "Breezy" on purpose, the EZ-Flyer II is aptly named, being one of the easiest, mellowest airplanes I've flown all year. It's a high-wing, strut-braced, tandem tri-gear with no external fuselage structure whatsoever, so you get all the air-conditioning you can possibly handle... and unless you're in Eskimo country, or on low-altitude patrol over a stockyard, this is a very pleasant way to fly.

The brainchild of Canadian lightplane junkie Wayne Winters, the machine uses a lot of the Merlin's wing and tail structure and borrows some other technology as well... but then again, that is how the original Breezy was born, too... borrowing wings and such from other airplanes and adapting them to the gantry style fuselage that serves as nature's own air-conditioning system. He decided specifically to use as much ultralight technology as possible in order to keep things familiar. In light of the fact that up North the EZ-Flyer is a primo (and quite legal) two-place ultralight trainer, and as long as you keep it light, it would be eligible for training use down here in the States as well.

The EZ-Flyer II has a steel tube fuselage structure that looks like a bent launch gantry laid on its side. It is a predominantly triangulated structure that serves as a strong but surprisingly light fuselage frame, and is obviously not a real challenge to weld up... hence the aggressive pricing for this bird. The engine is pusher mounted behind the wing and on top of the steel fuselage cage. It can handle all the bigger Rotax engines and Merlin indicates that the 80-hp Rotax 912 four-stroke engine and the Subaru generation may shortly be welcome here as well.

It is a 4130 chromoly steel construct that is painted at the factory prior to shipping. The wing has an aluminum "D" cell, is Ceconite covered and strut braced, but sports a large wingtip "fence" at the end that has recently been removed from factory ships for testing... with little detriment in overall handling. The ailerons are not quite full-span but are hinged in a frise-type setup with no differential. There are no flaps, and the wing is a constant chord assembly that I have personally seen built up in just a few days (all the way to cover).

The rudder tri-gear has a set of very heavy spring steel gear legs and monstrous 18 inch tundra tires, which I have personally tested far more than I wanted to on a wet, muddy, soggy Arkansas airstrip. The EZ-Flyer II is 21 feet long, 6 feet high, and has a span of 30 feet. The wing has 165 sq. ft. of wing area, a 10-gal fuel capacity, and is stressed to +4 and -2 Gs (ultimate limits are, of course, higher). With the standard Rotax 503, the 465-lb EZ-Flyer II has a max gross weight of 1000 lbs, leaving you more than 500 lbs to toss in a passenger and go-juice. Heavy pilots are gonna love this thing...

The EZ-Flyer allows for easy entry and exit simply because there is precious little structure to block your entrance. The front seat simply requires you to swing a foot and ease your hind end in and then sit down. Since the empty EZ-Flyer has a tendency to sit on its tail with the nose sticking skyward, you might want to push the seat down a bit first if you're not "vertically gifted." The back seat is just as easy to saddle up to.

Dual controls come in the form of a long J-neck control stick, rudder pedals, and a single-lever braking system to the left of the pilot seat. The throttle is also on the left and is made prominent on the prototype by a small golf-ball-shaped handle that sits atop the lever. The front seat offers minimal protection from the elements with a small windscreen that does a really fine job of keeping the worst of the breeze out of your face, and errant June bugs out of your dental work.

To our knowledge, we're the only magazine to evaluate both the Rotax 503 as well as the more powerful Rotax 582 version. My initial flights on the EZ-flyer occurred in the winter and were the first evaluation of the aircraft at that time, but we've flown it a few times since with varying conditions and found the machine to be a pretty consistent flyer. The current prototypes are being kept very simple... meaning pull-starters are the norm, but that is easily accomplished either outside of the aircraft or from the front seat if the recoil handle has been remote mounted to the front. All solo flying is accomplished from the front seat. As usual, my first flight was sans any accompaniment (I'm not quite sure whether this means that people really trust my flying skills... or they're terrified to fly with me), so it was off for the wild blue after a cursory briefing on how to fly the EZ-Flyer: "Uh, let's see now... pull back to go up... keep pulling back to go down... something l ike tha t." Hey, this IS the EZ-Flyer, right?

Taxi operations proved to be pretty simple and the big tires really did me proud by slogging through some slush with abandon. Steering action is aggressive and quick, but braking is an "on-or-off" affair since the current prototypes use a single brake lever that actuates both hydraulically braked mains in concert. The bird would definitely benefit from differential braking, especially in the rough fields that this thing is destined to be flying out of... a lot.

At any rate, first flights were off a beautiful but very soggy Arkansas runway that might have been a good bet for flood insurance that day; regardless, I firewalled the Rotax 503 powered prototype and found that the EZ-Flyer may be simple, but it ain't bashful.

There is some notable down thrust evident in full-power operations that will require initiating a positive rotation until you get to much higher than normal light-off speeds. "P" is not all that noticeable due to the position of the engine mount and the excellent rudder authority that sits well ensconced in the prop blast. Control effectiveness occurs early in the take-off as the tail feathers are awfully close to the prop and they are of generous proportion. As soon as you blast the engine, you have elevator and rudder right now, with ailerons but a second or two away.

I broke ground rather quickly, using a soft field procedure in order to get out of the mud as soon as possible, and was rewarded with a positive lift-off at about 35 mph and 350 feet. I let the machine accelerate out to 50 mph and then commenced a pretty solid 500- to 600- fpm climb, terminating a few minutes later with 1500 feet of altitude in the bank and beautiful countryside below me. There was a mite of ground fog here and there that morning, but it was widely scattered and the whole effect was quite striking.... a very bright sun trying to psych out my Ray-Bans and the cool morning air offering a slight but invigorating chill. The windshield did a great job of keeping the worst of the air blast off my face, but my elbows were buffeted by the breeze and the true romance of open cockpit flying was otherwise undisturbed.

Initial stability and control checks revealed a very honest little airplane. Cruising at 55 to 60 mph and a solid 5000 to 5500 rpm, the EZ-Flyer offered light to barely moderate control pressures, a wide range of physical control in the pitch and roll axis, and a rather aggressive rudder. Pitch response boasted a high degree of linearity, roll wasn't far behind, and the rudder was totally dependent in terms of response and control pressure on where you had the throttle. A small mechanical pitch trim system works well, is accessible from the front seat only, and is not the slightest bit touchy (just right, I might add).

Pitch stability behavior is dynamically typified by a slow but quite convergent oscillation, at cruise speeds, from a 30-degree pitch up input. Static behavior is quite true and holds the trimmed attitude quite well. The cycle is slow and methodical but totally damped out in three cycles or less. It's a mite slower than that in approach modes... but not tremendously so. Roll control is fairly positive, with a steady rate that benefits a lot from initial rudder input. Roll has a fair amount of adverse yaw attached to it, but this is to be expected from this planform. I grew to really appreciate the rudder, which has a somewhat modest but slightly positive static profile due to the utter lack of other streamlining influences, but is also a very aggressive control surface. Good dihedral effect was noted with the ability to quickly lift a wingtip with moderate rudder action. There is a fair amount of pitch trim change associated with power changes, so the pitch trim system came to be a welcome addition... though the light nature of the pitch axis made such changes a mere convenience rather than an utter necessity.

In the speed department, don't be surprised to look down and see highway traffic leave you in the dust. The bird is a draggy machine and no matter how much power you pour to it, sooner or later you run into an aerodynamic brick wall that says "ya gotta be kidding" the minute you start pushing 70 mph. Full tilt, don't expect much more than 75mph with the 503 and a tad over 80 with the 582. Normal cruise is a solid 55 to 65 mph depending on prop, payload, and conditions, and about 5000 to 5500 rpm of power.

The slow flight department is one of the EZ-Flyer's best areas. If you want a real solid slow flyer, the EZ-Flyer really shines clear. It offers only minimal reductions in overall control response as you slow through 40 mph, but the sink rate does tend to make itself known from there on out. The stall is moderately buffeted with a soft shudder that will alarm no one.. and the actual break, if you can coax one of the bird (depending on CG and all...) is pretty sedate. If you pitch aggressively, the EZ-Flyer pays off with a pretty slow break that dissipates the second the nose goes below the horizon and lift starts reasserting itself. The stall comes at or about 30 mph. Recovery is a simple matter of lowering the nose and adding some power if you want to arrest the sink rate fast.

Accelerated stalls are more aggressively buffeted but offer little to write home about... the actual break (what there is of it) is easily countered with modest rudder deflections, and lowered pitch attitudes initiate fast recoveries. The rudder remains highly responsive throughout the process and only roll seems to lose a bit of steam, though sufficient response seems to be available for any major upset. The EZ-Flyer resists spins quite aggressively. A solid high-pitched entry with aggressive rudder inducement at the break only results in a lazy corkscrew into the directions of rudder deflection of about a quarter-to a half-turn, before you're pretty much consigned to a descending spiral. Cross controlled entries involving a fully slipped entry are hardly more aggressive. At no time did I have to initiate a recovery procedure since the airplane did it, itself, each and every time. I would like to try this sometime with a passenger in the back, to get a more rearward CG; but to be truthful, I'm not expecting many changes.

What was a lot of fun, by the way, were some aggressively pitched power-on stall attempts.... believe me, from the front seat of the EZ-Flyer, such maneuvers definitely qualify as a "room with a view" and were pretty mild no matter what I did to muck up the works. This thing isn't totally idiot-proof, but it sure comes close...

The EZ-Flyer possesses very little fuselage area, so slips really do little but improve the view down final. There is a somewhat enhanced descent and a fair amount of prop cavitation, but other than that, it's probably easiest to point the nose down and let drag do its thing. Even if you come in a little on the hot side, the drag profile of this bird will kill excess speed in a real hurry. Landings are truly simple. Use a solid 50 to 55 mph down final, cross the fence with 50, chop the power, and start flaring. Speed degradation from there is pretty swift and you can be well down on the ground and braked in an easy 1000 feet from there. If you are into serious STOL, drag everything across the fence with a little extra power so you arrive with 40 to 45 at the threshold, chop the power, and suck the stick back once you are into a proper altitude range (about 4 feet or less). The resultant drag/sink will suck you right down to the ground, the gear will absorb everything with ap lomb, and aggressive braking will get you stopped in an easy 500 feet or less. Your mileage may very (grin).

I have had the chance to deal with crosswinds and for the same reason the slips don't do much, neither do crosswinds... though aggressive roll (into the crosswind) will easily counter up to 15 knots, and I suspect, more than that.

I re-sampled the EZ-Flyer at the 1995 Arlington Northwest EAA Fly-In, with a Rotax 582 this time, and my favorite copilot riding shotgun in the back. This was to be Vicki's first REALLY open cockpit flight, so I was curious to see what she might think of it all. We had a good intercom on board, so I was sure to get her opinions in short order.

We departed the ultralight runway at ARL after a quick re-brief from Wayne Winters and Merl995 (which won't last much longer... hint, hint) and can be built in 180 to 200hours. If you're interested in a pay-as-you-go program, you can purchase the EZ-Flyer in four separate kits (wing, fuselage, covering, engine)...

TEST PILOT SUMMARY

I really liked this thing! It has an unreal stability and control profile that nearly any novice pilot could adapt to with ease (as long as they have flown something this "open' before). The open cockpit allure is not for everyone, but the EZ-Flyer has a lot of reassuring structure where it counts and offers a solid feel in even rowdy conditions, like the 15 knots I got hit with at one point on a thermally morning.

The bird has a supremely docile stall, an excellent set of gear that will absorb soggy, wet ground with confidence, and the kind of visibility that can only be equalled by taking a dive over the side. One thing I must note about such simple airplanes... some are boring and some are quite entertaining... the EZ-Flyer is one of the fun ones. A really pleasant airplane, for an extremely pleasant price.

Reprinted/Distributed with permission
Jim Campbell, author, Editor-in-Chief
copyright 1995
U.S. Aviator magazine
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