Hard to believe my 601XL is going on it's 9th year of service.  I have the condition inspection slated for April to get it done right at the beginning of good flying weather,  This will be my most expensive annual as the main tires are due for replacement.  With 830 landings on them, the tread is basically gone and I would expect threads to start showing soon.  The planned Saturday breakfast fly-out was a scratch due to weather, but the low cloud deck was just high enough at my airport to…

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What a week Oshkosh was this year!!  I arrived at Whitman Field on the Saturday afternoon preceding the start of Oshkosh 2011.  Since this was our big “Zenith’s To Oshkosh” year, there were already several Zenith aircraft in the three rows of homebuilt parking earmarked for our types.  I parked my 601XL between Andy Elliott’s 601XL TD and Al Beyer’s 601HDS.  For a few days Matt Archer’s 601XL was parked right behind me.  During the week, aircraft came and went, but at the height of the show,…

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I was told that this was the wettest July in well over 100 years for the Oshkosh, Wisconsin area. Fortunately almost none of it fell during the EAA Airventure 2010 event. Unfortunately, it drenched the grounds in the couple of weeks leading up to it. I heard reports and saw pictures of areas on the grounds that were under 2 feet of water just a day or two prior to opening day.…

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Well my 601XL upgrade is now complete. The post-upgrade test flight occurred yesterday, March 23, and things went great. The sun was going down so I went up for three quick touch and go’s. The first thing I noticed was no oil can popping noises any more. I only got to 100 MPH so it will be interesting to see if they are gone at high speed also. In my short flight I did not notice any changes…

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I had a few people ask me why I thought solid rivet bucking was easy. I have to admit that I was fortunate to be taught how to drive rivets in A&P school a fair number of years ago, but the skill could be easily picked up by anyone mechanically inclined. I had the opportunity to make many mistakes before getting it right. I have not riveted much since then so there was a little bit of refresher needed. If you have access to the EAA web site, there is a Tony Bingelis article about rivet… Continue