Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James Cameron on May 12, 2013 at 6:54am

Richard,

I think you made a good choice for a second aircraft.

There are detailed lists of the changes on the Zenithair.com site. Basically Edition 2 beefed up the structure so that you could increase your gross weight up to 1,440 (from 1,320). This included stronger points on the spar, strut fittings, cabin frame, doublers on the fuselage, etc. Edition 3 was all about getting the extra headroom and the round skylight over the cabin. This also included a change to the cabin frame that omitted the cross brace, and replaced it with two small corner braces.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Austin on May 12, 2013 at 7:33am

Also, if you found a "real deal" on an unbuilt/partially built Edition 1, Zenith made an "Edition 2 Upgrade Kit" that lets you bring the Edition 1 up to Edition 2 specs. You might inquire at Zenith if that is still available.

In my case, I found a partially-completed Edition 1 that included the upgrade kit. The original builder, however, had already built the wings Edition 1, but had not closed them. I wasn't too concerned about building a complete Edition 2 since my whole purpose was to have a Light Sport aircraft (1320 lbs max) in case the medical went south! I talked to Caleb at Zenith about it and he said it wasn't worth the effort to deconstruct/reconstruct the wing structure just to make it Edition 2 if I wasn't going to increase the gross wt. to 1440 ... he said the Edition 1 is plenty strong. He also said, though, that since I already had the upgrade kit that I might as well incorporate that in the fuselage, which I did.

Since the wings were still open, I did go back and install the Edition 2 skin stiffeners. Things really worked out well - absolutely no oil-canning of wings in any flight regimen and just a little fuselage drumming with full-deflection rudder as in a maximum slip, which one doesn't normally need to do!

John

N750A

• ▶ Reply