Plane and Fancy : In Santa Monica, Its World Capital, a Swift Odd Aircraft Keeps Its Fans’ Dreams Aloft

At rest on the Tarmac at Santa Monica Airport, the Long-EZs look a bit like a flock of overfed sea gulls relaxing in the sun.

They certainly don’t look like normal airplanes. Their noses touch the ground. Where there should be a tail, there’s a propeller. Where there should not be a tail--out at the tip of each wing--there is one.

But earthbound appearances are beside the point; this tiny experimental craft is built to fly. And flying, say the fanatics that have made Santa Monica Airport the Long-EZ capital of the world, is something the plane does very well.

“All the rest are like station wagons in the air,” says flight instructor Gulshin Gilbert. “The Long-EZ is a Ferrari.”

Just 17 feet long and tipping the scales at 700 pounds, the Long-EZ holds world speed and distance records for its class of home-built plane. It can climb 1,400 feet in a minute, fly as high as 14,000 feet, and fly 2,000 miles without refueling. Its top speed is 204 m.p.h.

Built primarily of Styrofoam, epoxy, Fiberglas and plastics, the Long-EZ is light, free from corrosion, fuel-efficient and nearly stall-proof.

The plane was designed in 1979 by Burt Rutan, the maverick aircraft designer who also created Voyager, the plane that entered aviation history in December, 1986, by circumnavigating the globe on a single tank of fuel.

In 10 years, the Long-EZ has attracted a following of aviation enthusiasts around the world. But the biggest single concentration is in Santa Monica, where more than 50 people--doctors, actors, flight instructors, lawyers and business owners are spending hours every day building the planes in their garages, tinkering with them in an airport hangar, showing them off at air shows, or simply flying them.

The early Long-EZs were sold as kits by Rutan, but he has since quit the business. Newer ones are now made from scratch by builders who work with plans obtained from other owners.

It’s not a simple process--those who work at it part-time can take two to four years to build the plane--but it is relatively cheap. Whereas a conventional two-seater, such as a 9-year-old Cessna 152, might cost about $40,000, a Long-EZ runs about $20,000--plus labor, of course.

Because it is built by amateurs and hobbyists, the Long-EZ is classified by the Federal Aviation Administration as an experimental plane, and therefore cannot be used for any commercial purposes. Nevertheless, FAA inspector Lyle Alexander says he thinks it “is a great airplane” that “would pass all the tests” if it ever went into production.

Though a varied bunch, the members of the Santa Monica Long-EZ contingent seem to have three things in common: They enjoy the process of construction, they love to fly, and they praise the “inventive genius” of Rutan.

“It’s the first plane I fell in love with,” says flight instructor Gilbert, who has flown a wide variety of Cessnas, Pipers, helicopters and sailplanes. “It has incredible visibility. The canopy is completely clear. The sound of the air flow is like that in a glider. It’s very maneuverable. You think of a turn, and you will have turned. It’s so light on the control.”

Each Long-EZ, however, is “only as good as the builder,” Gilbert cautions. Almost all the problems that may arise can be traced either to faulty implementation of the construction plan or a pilot’s error in judgment.

Westside businessman Stan Shniderman, 56, says Rutan’s genius is reflected in the manufacturing process.

“Burt had laid the plans out as an education in itself,” says Shniderman, who bought the blueprint for the plane and a list of the necessary materials from Rutan in 1985. “It was not one big job but 100,000 small jobs. Fixing the glass there, putting the epoxy here, cutting the template. And at the end I had made a remarkable plane.”

If Shniderman needed any confirmation, he got it in April when he and five others flew from Santa Monica to Lakeland, Fla., to participate in races organized by the Experimental Aircraft Assn. The team won five trophies and the Long-EZ bagged the first, second, third and fourth ranks in its category.

Not merely speedy and maneuverable, the Long-EZ also has a remarkable range. A normally equipped model can routinely make a 2,000-mile trip. The record is 3,970 nautical miles, or about statute 4,560 miles, set by Dick Rutan, the brother of the designer, who also was co-pilot of Voyager on its global circuit. Dick Rutan’s 1981 flight, in a Long-EZ equipped with an auxiliary fuel tank, went from Anchorage, Alaska, to the Turk Islands in the West Indies in just over 30 hours.

The Long-EZ is “probably the safest and the only modern airplane in the field,” says lawyer David Orr, 43, a former Air Force pilot in Vietnam who finished building his Long-EZ a year and a half ago.

“It has one of the most forgiving designs and has the advantage that the pilot is uniquely knowledgeable about the mechanics of the airplane,” he says.

Orr is one of the founders and an active member of Squadron 2, a group of about 35 Long-EZ owners or builders in Santa Monica. Group members meet frequently to share new ideas regarding design improvement and problems in construction. It also organizes guest lectures and seminars featuring professionals from the aircraft industry and related fields, and it welcomes aviation enthusiasts who are interested in building their own planes.

But there has been a sharp fall in the design and production of homemade planes. Rutan stopped selling plans for Long-EZ and other experimental craft in 1985 because of concerns about liability.

Orr says Rutan’s decision to pull out of the business is a symptom of a broader problem.

“The aviation business is stuck,” he says, “because developments are discouraged by litigation. Whenever a plane crashes, the mass media are all over them. . . . The same can’t be said of a car crash.”

Some of the Long-EZ contingent in Santa Monica suggest that the enthusiasm for home-built planes in general may also be on the ebb because busy people simply don’t have the time.

But if Stan Shniderman had any worries about the Long-EZ’s future, he left them on the ground on the day last week when he took a visitor up for a spin.

He soared quickly to 3,000 feet over the ocean. He gave the control stick a gentle jab, and the plane cut circles in the air. Then he executed some sharp turns and pirouettes.

Soon, Shniderman removed both hands from the controls and shouted into the microphone: “It’s so easy!”

From the rear seat, it certainly appeared so.