Cloud Dancer

Bryce's comments make perfect sense to me; if you extend the mains your increasing the angle of attack as it sits on the ground and the added air flow under the wings helps it get air born quicker. We played around with swapping out different wheel sizes on our ultralights back in the early 80's and noticed the same thing. I had an original design airplane that I built based on the Mach .007 plans; at one point I had the gear so low that I could not get off the ground at all. When we switched to the taller bicycle wheels like I had on my Teratorn taildragger the airplane finally could get off the ground. We also experimented on Rotec Rally's and noticed they also got off the ground faster with taller wheels up front. At the time my friend had bought out a dealer's remaining stock of Rally parts so we had lots of tubing and parts to play with. We ended up building a Rally 2b, a Rally 3 and a Rally Sport out of those spare parts and experimented with many different tires and rims. Flying those tail draggers without brakes wore out many tires from all the crosswind landings, those bicycle tires were never designed for the weight and side loads those ultralights were putting on them. My friend also was a bicycle mechanic and we had tons of spare bicycle parts to pick from. We quickly found out those plastic mag style motocross bike rims held up the best but heavy side loads would tear the centers of the hubs out on those too. We also wore out tennis shoes as those were the only brakes we had on the paved runway back in those days. Be careful if trying this with a Rotec as too much tennis shoe pressure on pavement will result in your feet getting dragged under your seat and the the axle. My friend was slow to learn this and suffered many twisted ankles. I learned to skid off the pavement into the grass resulted in burning off airspeed much quicker and saved on tennis shoes and ankle injuries. If the grass had not been mowed in awhile the change from runway to grass tried to put you on the nose. Full up elevator works to keep you from nosing over until your below a certain speed where the tail surfaces don't have enough air to provide any authority. At that point you better be pointing towards something friendly rather than a fence because your at the mercy of the aircraft until it's slow enough to stop. We even tried heavy leather gloves to use as differential brakes during these transitions from lack of  tail control speed to safe taxi speed. By grabbing one or the other tires you could keep yourself from a ground loop. The ultralights would weather vane from a cross wind puff of side air sending you either into a ground loop or try to send you off into a runway fence on the side of the strip.
Later ultralights I flew such as the Fisher 202 still had no brakes but handled well with the smaller tires they were designed for. You might say the Avid Flyer was a copy of the Fisher 202 since the 202 predated the Avid by a year or so. The 202 was itself a copy of the early airplanes such as the Cub, the Aeronca and the Tailorcraft.
That nose wheel skid idea idea I mentioned earlier was not a random thought but a reflection of my vast experience with early ultralights. The Teratorn the Rally and the Mach .007 all started as conventional gear aircraft. They all would nose over if given a chance and they all had part of the frame that would act as a skid prior to nosing over and in most cases it would burn off enough energy to prevent a roll over. The Teratorn and Rally designs were pushers so no danger of a prop strike in a nose over. The Mach .007 was a tractor design but I never got it close to hitting the ground, the frame would drag first in tall grass or a tall clover field slowing you down. My friend did manage to put one of the Rally's on the nose but it took a crash to do it. He ground off a section of the wood floor board before it went over; he was really moving and it was 100 percent pilot error. I've seen first hand the benefits of part of your frame acting as a skid to prevent nose over and the advantages of pushers with their props protected in the back.
My grandfather was a Great Lakes dealer back in the early days of aviation. As a child he would tell me stories of flying those. He started flying in a Jenny.The idea of a tail skid seemed so strange to me at the time. I could not understand why they didn't have a wheel back there. He would tell me stories of holding the stick ahead with a heavy foot on the rudder pedal and then giving it a blast of throttle to turn it on the ground. It seemed so strange until I started flying ultralights a decade later and realized he needed the air over the tail to get it to turn and he needed that tail skid to stop. Those early stories all clicked when I started flying ultralights.
The Cobra the Quicksilver and the Mitchell Wing I flew later all had nose wheels and put an end to the tail draggers and their tendencies. My A-10 Mitchell Wing and later my T-10 Mitchell Wings even had a brake! What progress.
Today it seems we forget there's nothing new here, people have unraveled the tail dragger mystery again and again. Every airplane design has strengths and weaknesses. Landing gear placement has been argued to death since the Wright Brothers and that's a good thing. It keeps things fresh for the next generation learning to fly these things with wings. Is there a magic formula for figuring out wheel placement in regards to wing leading edge or center of gravity? I wish things were that black and white but the reality is more gray. Toe in, toe out, gear forward or backward, angle of attack and more all play into the equation. Another question is who designed the Avid gear so that it could be flipped around and mounted both ways? Clearly the designer intended it to fly both ways right? Is this in the early plans somewhere? The nose gear flipped for tail dragger operation puts the placement very close to the Fisher 202 placement that predated the Avid Flyer. The 202 I flew was quick to raise the tail with a little throttle but I thought it flew great set up like that.
Maybe Bryce has some insight as to where he heard about flipping the gear around? We are hundreds of miles apart so I doubt we heard about it from the same person.
I'm looking forward to hearing other ideas on this subject.

Here's a link for the non-believers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_F86gQ8A-U
Another gentleman at the auction also mentioned the gear was designed to be flipped around like this. He also had built an Avid Flyer.

The airplane has the attachment brackets to move the landing gear forward for tail wheel operation and by flipping them around from side to side the additional tie location for the suspension rubber works with the current gear that's on the airplane. I've seen You Tube videos of people doing this and while the gear is not ahead as much as the newer styles; those that fly this way say they have not had any problems.
I'm curious if the guy that nosed his over had any tail dragger experience? I've never heard of anyone holding full up elevator during a rev-up nosing one over? Anyone else ever heard of this? That said, all these Avid Flyers and Kitfox designs seem to have a short legged wheel stance. The tail hardly even begins to fly and they seem to take off. What happened to airplanes that required you to push the stick ahead to get the tail off the ground and then pull back once flying speed is established?
Anyone ever make an aerodynamic shaped skid plate that could mount in the nose wheel mounting tube? While you would still loose a prop in a nose over; a skid could help prevent damage to the lower cowl and allow your airplane to burn off energy while it slows down. Think of it as training wheels for transitional pilots learning how tail draggers differ from nose wheel aircraft.
Flapperon attachment points. Not a good photo, I took it before I purchased the airplane in the dark, unlit hanger.
 

Greetings, I'm the guy that bought it. I'm located in Manchester, Iowa. I sent a letter off to the previous owner to see if he wanted to sell me the missing parts but so far I've gotten no response so I'm going to either buy or fabricate the missing cowl, doors, prop and tail wheel assembly. I've taken the 582 gray head apart and bought new seals and gaskets etc. Waiting on the new motor mounts to arrive to get the engine back in the airplane. The wiring needs gone through, I've already fixed some of it. Hope to have it flying by late spring if I get the cowling sorted out. The doors are an easy build if I can't find anything reasonable. Probably build the spit door version so I can hang my arm out the window.
I may fly it as a tripod at first and add a tail wheel down the road to fly it as a tail dragger.