I know a former Teenie driver here in Mesa. The airplane that he owned was modified with an aux fuel tank mounted behind the seat! For a plane that tends towards being tail heavy that sounds like a bit of a risk. I watched him fly it and he never had any complaints about the airplane. He did say that he never wanted to let it get too slow because it ran out of elevator, and flew an 80 mph final. One of his landings did sound rather firm when the nose wheel touched down. But he never said it had any bad habits. He also mentioned that it was more sensitive to turbulence than other planes he had flown, no doubt due to its low mass.
His experience included several different kinds of airplane and I consider him to be one of those natural, intuitive pilots. He sold the plane to get a two seater and weeks later would admit that he regretted giving the Teenie away. He owned a Quickie afterward and described that airplane as being too squirrely.
I met another gentleman who had a college friend back in the 1970s that flew his Teenie from San Diego to Yuma weekly as a commuter! And I have a friend with a Teenie with some 400 hours on it since 1975.
So I am going to agree with Ken here, it really depends on the builder's methods/madness and the pilot's flying skills. If it's built light and kept to the theme of the plans you should have a good little airplane.
Paul
Posted on Feb 20, 2008, 12:44 PM from IP address 68.2.146.29