There are several of Burt Rutan's unique aircraft designs all clustered together just off the edge of the main display ramp at Oshkosh. As you might expect, this collection of flying machines attracts a lot of attention thru the day. After the rain finally stopped around noon on Wednesday, I put some attention on the Rutan Model 81 Catbird.

 The Catbird was conceived and built in the late 80's by Burt as an outgrowth of a design-project by Scaled Composites (owned by Beech at the time) for a possible Bonanza replacement. The five seat cabin is unusual (imagine that) in having the pilot sit in the middle of the airplane, slightly forward and between the second and third seats. Then, the last two seats are facing aft. If I remember the idea from back in the day, this arrangement kept the biggest part of the body mass fairly close together for CG control while also putting the heads of all five people relatively close together for easy and delightful airborne chat.

 The airplane also had both a canard and an aft mounted (forward-swept) horizontal tail. To learn a boatload more about the Catbird, check out this 1988 Catbird article in Sport Aviation... it'll really give you the inside scoop. Most of the Catbird pix here are from Wednesday. The two without a big crowd around it are from Sunday, before Oshkosh started.