We just signed a lease for a hangar at Houston’s Ellington Airport, correction, Ellington SPACEPORT!
KEFD is one a very few facilities the FAA has designed as Spaceports. I find this a very appropriate place for us because after all, we are the “Homebuilts that led to Space” !
It’s also a bit ironic when you consider Burt Rutans outspokenness about NASA. Burt spawned the commercial space age and in his rightfully so opinion accomplished through free enterprise and ingenuity what government would have taken years and billions of dollars, if at all. So here we are, establishing the first RAFE Canard Base at a Spaceport, right down the road from the NASA Johnson Space Center, right in NASA’s backyard.
Despite the ribbing Burt gave NASA, his designs were popular with people working for NASA. Space Shuttle Astronaut Jim Voss built and flies a LongEZ that won Plans Champion at OSH 2011. Charlie Precourt and Ken Cameron, both Space Shuttle Pilots and Commanders built EZ’s. Charlie a Varieze and Ken a Cozy. The late Frank Caldeiro built a LongEZ. Dennis Butler won Reserve Grand Champion Plans Built - Silver Lindy with his Cozy IV. My Varieze, N930L was built in Merritt Island FL which in the early 80's was a hotbed of Rutan building, a lot from the personnel working with NASA and the Kennedy Space Center.
The relationship with NASA and Rutan has been around a long time and now the Ellington Spaceport Canard Base will become the new home for the Dave Brown LongEZ. When the Cozyjet gets repaired it will join it. The hangar is big enough for RAFE Aircraft and others. The facility is excellent with big, wide runways perfectly suited for formation training. With a Canard Base in the 4th largest city in the US we will gain more visibility, more aircraft Sponsors and no doubt more flying!
Come join us at the Ellington Canard Base!
Ryszard Zadow
Founder and President, RAFE.
www.RutanAircraftFlyingExperience.org
