I was able to get about 3 1/2 hrs in over the weekend. So far so good.

Hi Joe, I havent done my wings yet but I have the parts made with the exception of the rear spars. I can't bend .032 material 8 feet long so I will have to buy them from zenith. I also need to buy the aft fusealage longerons before I can move fwd. I havent given much thought to the alignment of the wing attachment but just off the top of my head If you build the wings first then attach them to the cage. The rear spar attaches to the bracket on the rear fuse. you can make it fit the wing and then attach the cage to the sheet metal.  I have been considering making my cage, I have a friend who is a welder and he will also be doing my tanks. There will be  lot of things to pay attention to when all those parts come together ( cage, firewall, fwd and rear fuse. wings) I will probably loose some sleep over that one.

Hi Joe. Appreciate the comments. I found the use of pipes to make the larger bends was worth the effort. I used a 3/4" pipe to make the bends on the flaparons. The dia. of 3/4" pipe is 1.05" and I think the plans calls for a 1.5" dia bend. After the material springs back it works out just right. The elevator and Horiz. stab. calls for a 2" dia bend and I found that a piece of 1.5" tubing worked well. The one thing I learned is to cut the skin a little longer and wider by an inch or so. After you make the bend pull the skin over the nose and start laying out the rivet holes. After all the holes are drilled and the skin is clecoed in place mark the edges and cut the skin to its final shape. This has worked well for me because you don't have to have the bend dead on. Hope this helps

Hi Joe, Yes, I fly out of KJXN. My hanger is next to the JCC flight school on the west side.

Come up whenever you get a chance.

Dan

We get one or two snows a year, every few years we one of the storms is 4+ inches. Combine a particularly wet snow with hills that rival San Francisco and you get a driving mess.

Are you talking about the "Power Off Takeoff" guy? I thought he was over in Idaho.

I fly very tight patterns so I can land in the event of a engine outage and practice power idle landings in the 701.

You can absolutely land a 701 (can't say anything about the 750) on idle power. The trick is you need to be close in and high on final then drop the nose a bit get a little bit of momentum at the end so you can flare easily, otherwise you will land flat.

My fuel filter clogged with some debris still left in the tank ( at about 20 flight hours ) causing partial power loss. I was able to make the runway from a 1/4 mile out downwind and perform a soft, flared landing without additional power.

I have never flown a CTLS or any of the other planes in that family so I can not compare. My points of reference are Cessnas, Super Cubs and to a lesser extent RVs.

(RVs by the way have a similar glideslope problem)

Personally I think it is an easier plane to fly than my 150. That said, it is a very different plane to fly than anything else. You need to work the rudders. Turns need to be lead with the rudder.

The sink rate can be amazing, but I found a good simulation is to practice power idle landings with full flaps in a 150. You get a very similar sight picture and sink rate, and you learn to control the glide slope with power.

Getting on the back side of the curb in the 701 is a mixed bag. My plane is very stall resistant, but the sink rate will smash the plane. You need to feel the drop and watch the VSI. Control speed with pitch and descent with power. I get my flare pitch well established before crossing the threshold. It is a tricycle geared airplane you land like a taildragger.

Handling in low speeds is fine. At 50MPH you still have plenty of flaperon authority, less so at 35MPH, but more than you will need. I would be cautious about overly steep turns at slow speeds just like any other plane.

Hi Joe,

We bought the cages from Zenith. They have all worked out quite well once we figured out what we doing. We had an issue much like Steven but once we got everything together, things added up pretty good. The big issue is having the wing cord distance correct. We simply measure our wing and made our cage dimension the same.

Cheers, Joe