One of the fun things about owning and building a plane is that it is an on going maintence project. Some planes are famous for the amount of ground hour to flight hours. For example the F15 eagle and other fighters had a 4 to5 to 1 ratio! Meaning 4 to 5 hours of maintenance to 1 hour of combat flight time. With our trusty Zodiacs, I find it to be the inverse 4 to 10 hours of flight hours to 1 hour of ground required maintenance. Now that is value! Now ground…

Dear friends and fellow builders,

The summer flying is over, the lawn mowing is done, the garden veggies are in the freezer and the leaves are raked and hauled away. Winter is setting in once more in Pennsylvania so its time to tuck my 701 safely away.

Its been two years since…

In Europe where most owners of a Zenair design acquired their aircraft "ready-to-fly", pilots and mechanics seldom have access to the original drawings for maintenance and repairs. Not having exact part-numbers can often cause confusion and frustrations when attempting to order replacement parts.…

Tried to pace my 701 to have some "free time" around birthday and Christmas. Evidently I overdid it. Here is my latest build. The jig for my slats which are on order, but won't ship till the 13th ;-(

Not good at waiting, but bet I am not the only one who folded to family pressure and reduced 701 activity for…

This would be an ideal time of year to hear from the Zenith forums & bloggers about their tried and true ways to preheat their aircraft. Please posts your ideas and share how you get her warmed up for Winter flight.

On my 500 hour 601XL-B, I use an electric automotive oil pan heat pad (45 mins.) and I also use the electric small milkhouse heater (45 mins.) (the one posted on the Jabiru site). I put a flexible metal tube on the heater and…

If you are a Zenith builder and not a subscriber, send me an email (jon@zenair.org) and I can send you a back issue sample of the newsletter and DVD. To renew, or subscribe, click here.…

I had noted the plug wires as originally run appeared to be blocking airflow into and around the cylinders, so to improve the airflow I changed the location and manner in which the plug wires were run. The photos posted are only a few of those that tell the story of the change and I will try to include more photos as allowed. Take notice of the clear air pathway thru the intake plenums and how the plug wires now are barely visable within the plenum. I also made use of the old plug holes to…

A question for all the Zenith builder & fans out there..."What ever became of the Zodiac Gemini CH620?"

I have the factory information about the aircraft it. I stumbled across the literature while going through a stack of aircraft sales pitches I collected over the years. For those of you who have never heard of this aircraft it looked like a it was a version of the CH601HDS series, with retractable tri-gear and twin Rotax 912 80 hp engines on a low wing. It was a two seat…

I have installed a 2000 Suzuki 1.3 fuel injected engine in my CH701 on amphibious floats. For initial ground running I have connected it to the radiator that was used for a Rotax 618. I'm not thinking this will be the cooling system I will fly with and am looking for information on radiator and cooling system installation from anybody who has installed this engine in a 701 and had thought they had a good cooling system.

Phil