Q-2 / Q-200
click on the "pics" to enlarge or go to their subject pages
The development and production of the Q-2, was the financially most successful project we have ever had. The Q-2 was a follow on from Burt Rutan's designed "QUICKIE" Quickie Aircraft Corporation, also in Mojave, CA had purchased the rights to the Quickie from Burt Rutan and then developed the Q-2 from that. They rightfully decided that the "quicker" a home builder could show substantial progress, the more likely they were to carry on with - and complete the project. Both desirable from everyone's point of view. The decision was made to sell fuselage shells to the home builder. The VariEze had shown that the shaping and completion of the fuselage from raw foam blocks, was a time consuming and relatively heavy solution to this task. (The filling and contouring - depending on how well the builder had performed up to this point - added a fair amount of weight. The much nicer shape of the Q-2 and the prefabricated shells were a very attractive solution.
We had completed a fairly large NASA contract recently and had a few bucks in the bank, while Quickie Aircraft Corporation had not yet sold their first aircraft kit. we teamed up with them, providing the tooling at our cost in return for the sole manufacturing rights. By the time we had produced the Plug and then the first set of molds for the aircraft, we were pretty much out of money. It still took some weeks to develop the methods for the fabrication. (another story). Bottom line: By the time things got rolling with the sales, we had geared up to four sets of molds and were fabricating 4 sets of fuselage shells every day. We also started fabricating fuel tanks and cowlings.
Below is the construction sequence for one of the four fuselage components
The shop in "full gear" |
The shop in "full gear" |
Some finished parts |
A transcript of an article in Popular Science will be posted here in in the future. If you are really interested go to the "contact page" and I will get it for you