I saw this sitting on the ramp the other day and thought it was broken till I took a closer look. It seems that the nose gear partially retracts to allow easy boarding, there's a pedestal or foot the nose rests on. You might be able to see it in the pic. Looks like a fun little plane!

At first I thought this was a screenshot out of FSX or the like.

That was pretty neat.


Bullet

No kidding...never saw a Vari-Eze before? Burt Rutan design. Home built. Really popular. Go to Oshkosh and there are lines of 'em. Weird name, I know, but it comes from the fact that they are very easy to build. And no, it's not to allow easy boarding. You lower the nose gear before getting in the airplane. It's for easy storage and to protect the rather delicate gear. It fully retracts in the air, and is fast as hell.

actually the real reason the nose gear folds is because the center of gravity is so far back and delicate that the airplane can easily lift off the front gear from a minor wind gust and "tail strike" the prop just while sitting. an expensive and embarrassing proposition.

some builders elect to put bricks or heavy avionics in the front bay so that they can leave the gear down when out of the plane.

i'm currently building one of these aircraft (i got my hands on a set of the "grey market" plans a few years ago). it will be years before i finish and register it as i'm just building small parts that fit in my closet until i have a bigger house / workspace to do things in. it's a lot like building a surf board though!

Isn't it called a Cozy? Nice fast little cruiser I believe.

Isn't the "Cozy" a larger plane of the same ideas, designed by the same guy, Rutan?

Now there's an aerospace entrepreneur who should have a movie made about him!

someone has a limp gear... hahaha.

Good friend of mine owns a Vari-Eze and stopped to visit on a trip Oshkosh 2005. Weather , storms
drove him this way and we put them up for the night. My son loved it and today would not fit inside
if you saw him now. Bigger then all of us in these photos.

Yes, the Vari-eze requires a parking stance with the nose gear re-tracted Or it will fly under a light wind.

I know a pilot (He flew in Vietnam and was shot up in an F-4, so bad he bellied it in and broke his wrist) who used to own one. Said it was a fun plane to fly, but was prone to making the pilot think he was more maneuverable than he really was. He said on more than one occasion he was acting like a fighter pilot in the back hills of TN and had to remind himself he couldn't gain altitude on the drop of a dime.