Quote Originally Posted by CharlieN View Post
FWIW I have a Long EZ here in my yard. The airfoils selected and the lack of balancing of control surfaces may be fine when flown at 200 but I personally would not fly this at 300+ without allot of design changes.
I'm not going to speculate on the crash cause, but I want to correct an inaccuracy (and I'm pretty sure we've had this discussion before). Long-EZ's (and all Rutan derivative canards - Variezes, Long-EZs, COZYs, Berkuts E-Racers, etc.) have 100% or more mass balanced elevators and ailerons. If the one in your yard isn't balanced correctly, well, that's not a fault of the design. The only surface that isn't balanced is the rudder, and that's because it only moves outboard and has a hard-stop for inboard movement.

Correctly built EZ's have been flown and tested to 240 KIAS - possibly higher - without issue. But as has been pointed out, this was NOT a plans built EZ of any type - it merely resembled one.