Hi Roy, its good to hear from you. I'm glad you are back to the 601hd. I had my final inspection back in 2006 and flew for about 10 hrs, but ran into a problem with vaporlock, and then had a few other problems with the fuel system when trying to track down the problem. Then we moved Erna's parents to Ottawa and I decided to build a house. That took up all my time for the next 10 yrs and more, and I have had big time trouble getting back to the plane. I still make some progress every year, and maybe this summer I will get her back flying. I changed out my original subaru engine to an O 235 and am remaking the cowling now (all aluminum). I had to remake one of my in wing gas tanks and my home blown canopy started to craze, so I had to blow another one. I still have to mount the new plastic in the frame, but will change over to the new forward hinging design with the extra rollover support. I had originally build a forward hinging canopy and it worked OK but I found that it had a LOT of wind resistance when open so wanted to reduce the surface area that opened a little bit.

As for the landing gear, the design that Chris has works fine and is good and strong, but it is very difficult to install and change the bungees, which has to be done every five years. For that reason alone I would consider moving over to the spring gear. I think I will try to get my bird flying with the existing gear (it will need a TC inspection since I changed the engine) and worry about the gear later.

You can email me at martin.poettcker@marpoe.com any time, or phone 613 832 1210(home) or 613 850 9260(cell).

Cheers and take the vitamin D;

Martin