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Permalink Reply by Bob McDonald on October 16, 2011 at 7:48am

The CH601HD (HDS) is built with a negative angle of incidence when sitting on its landing gear. You must pull the stick back to lift the nose on take-off. On landing once the main gear touch down the nose wheel really wants to "plunk" down making it a very simple aircraft to land in a X-wind. This Zodiac is so simple to fly "your Grand Mother could fly it." It was designed as a safe aircraft for the average low time pilot to fly. Construction was straight forward so it could be built by the 1st time builder in a single garage, basement or apartment living room. Many were used in training enviroments. Yours was built by Art Mitchel at Flypass, another member on this site Alfred Brugner from Kitchener flys a Flypass CH601HD with close to 1200 hrs flight school service on the airframe.....same paint scheme also. If you can't see over the nose when you fly Chris Hientz allowed for the placement of your wifes couch pillows under the seat upholstery to adjust for different hieght pilots... the adjustment limit being your head hitting the canopy.   :>)

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Permalink Reply by Jerry Latimer on October 16, 2011 at 10:41am

I seem to remember Scott Laughlin changing the angle of incidence on his plans built XL.  He is a member here but hasn't been active for several years.  If you not a member of the Matronics email forums you might join it and ask the folks their.  There was an active discussion about this several years ago.  Matronics also allows you to search the archives and see the old discussions.

When building my HDS, I didn't check the angle of incidence of the horizontal stabilizer.  The plans and the work instructions didn't really give you any indication how to do it or what it should be.  When my construction was almost complete, I obtained the instructions used on installing the horizontal stabilizer for the XL off the Zenith builders website.  The instructions actually had a simple method for checking the angle during the install.  I believe the instructions had the angle set at 0 degrees.  I went back and check the angle on my HDS using the method outlined in XL work instructions and found it to be 1/2 degree negative.  I'm living with that right now.  To correct this, a new front horizontal stabilizer mounting bracket would have to be fabricated.  I haven't decided to do that yet.

Jerry

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