From the Canard avaitor's list...
 "I received a cell phone call from a friend at KSUS (St. Louis Spirit) this
 afternoon at about 1:35 pm. He was upset and could hardly say what had just
 seen. From his open hangar he witnessed a mutual friend on down wind leg
 suddenly pitch up, roll nearly inverted and disappear behind an adjacent row
 of hangers in what appeared to be 45 degree dive. He said we just lost Olie.

 Olie is one of the guys in a local group messing around with experimental
 airplanes, he was trying to get the one and only metal built VariViggin to
 fly with a Mazda rotary engine. This was the second or third time Olie had
 attempted to fly the airplane in the past several years. It was a beautiful
 machine copied from original drawings and built by a couple engineers in
 Canada and painted like a Blue Angel F-18. Olie bought it and had it trucked
 in. We were in total shock and not feeling well at all about this happening
 to a guy we knew so well.

 I was really in the dumps when the phone rang again about 20 minutes later.
 It was the same friend calling to say local guys were reporting Olie was
 walking around the wreckage which was up in a tree. I said, this is the best
 phone call I have ever received, wow!

 I had Olie's cell phone number and called him. Sure enough, he was alive and
 well, and I said man am I glad to hear your voice. He said things happened
 real quick and he would brief everyone as soon as possible, meanwhile he was
 waiting for the FAA and also looking for a ride back to the airport. (he may
 not have been aware of it, but there was quite a traffic jam developing on
 Airport Road as a number of people saw him go in, one said he couldn't
 believe he was not killed, all this on a local TV web site)

 This evening I received more info on what happened. The engine quit at about
 90 knots on down wind leg and the airplane pitched up immediately, probably
 due to a high thrust line, speed dropped off to about 70, and the machine
 rolled nearly inverted about that quick. Olie said "some basic instinct
 kicked in - I pushed the nose down trying to recover some speed and kicked
 rudder real hard trying to get the airplane to roll back up right" - it did
 just that before it hit the trees. He climbed down with hardly a scratch.

 We are thankful our friend Olie is with us tonight...."

 Marc Weise

 Glad to hear he is OK.
 Was he talking to anybody on the internet about his engine?
 I don't have anybody on here by the name of Olie.

 What was his last name?

 If anybody knows somebody that is installing a rotary please
 ask him to get some help on the engine. There are enough things different
 about it that can hurt you if you are unaware.

 http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/2D2281FB023C8059862575ED006EA5EF?OpenDocument

 "CHESTERFIELD -- A pilot who crashed his small experimental plane this
 afternoon near Highway 40 and Spirit of St. Louis Airport walked away
 from the crash, Chesterfield police said.

 The rear-engine plane crashed into a bank of trees about 1:15 p.m.
 in an area just south of the highway, north of the airport and
 west of the Spirit of St. Louis Boulevard overpass, Chesterfield
 police Lt. Steve Lewis said.

 The pilot, a man whose name and age were not immediately available,
 was taken to a hospital as a precaution. No one on the ground
 was hurt, and no buildings were damaged.

 No one else was onboard the small plane, Lewis said.

 The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation
 Safety Board will take over investigation to determine what caused
 the crash. It was not immediately clear if the plane was taking
 off or landing when it went down."


 Paul Lamar


Right..  Need to get people the basic care, feeding, and cooling (and
conversion) info.  It would be like modifying a PT6 (or a Rotax 582 or
a Solar T62), bolting it on, and expecting everything to be OK.

It sounds like maybe the CG wasn't quite right?  I didn't remember the
Viggen being able to drive the main wing to stall that easily.  Maybe
it was "supposed" to be able to do that.

Good for him (his hands and feet) remembering to unload and then turn.
 I wouldn't be able to sleep very well after riding one to the ground.


Matt-

One can easily stall the main wing before the canard. The aspect ratio
of the Viggen canard is too low consequently the stall is delayed
relative to the main wing.

IMHO I would tell people not to fly this airplane.

Paul Lamar