EAA staff Zenith 750 project

[Chad Jensen]

The EAA staff build of a Zenith 750 STOL kit is underway! This past Saturday, 15 staffers spent the day working on three different rudders as Sebastian and Roger from Zenith watched over our progress. They brought us three rudder kits to build as a part of the opening day kickoff of our project, and I'm happy to report that all three rudders were completed in a matter of hours!

I have almost 40 people interested in helping build from the EAA staff, and a goal of Memorial Day weekend 2013 as a completion date. I'll use this thread as a "build log" as we work our way through an ELSA version of the 750.

Special thanks to Sebastian and Zenith Aircraft for the generous donation of the 750 to EAA for us to build, and eventually put in to the EAA Employee flying club!

Pics!

The kit just after being unloaded-



Our workshop corner in the EAA Weeks hangar-



Looking down the workbench that will be used for major assemblies-



While we only need one, we built three!

[CarlOrton]

Thanks for posting, Chad; will be great to see this site used as the build log.

[kmacht]

Thanks for posting, Chad; will be great to see this site used as the build log.

A build log is nice but why not make this a story each month or every other month in sport aviation magazine? This is exactly the type of content people on here have been asking to see in the magazine.

Keith

[CarlOrton]

Fully agree with Keith.

[Chad Jensen]

Exactly what we intend to do guys. We will have photo and video covering build sessions and we will write about it for SA and Experimenter. I will also be doing a blog starting in a week or two. It will be much more than just this thread.

[Eric Witherspoon]

But to keep this thread fresh, maybe a monthly pop here w/ link to the blog & other data that emerges (articles, etc.). Or if monthly doesn't show enough visible progress (I know it doesn't on my project - last 4 months the structure looks the same, but the clecoes are turning different colors as I drill it out...), maybe just pop in here when there's a "big difference" to show / write about. My interest is that I've been asked to TC for a CH750 project, but my experience is in a couple of other blind-riveted designs. So I'll be looking for CH750-specifics - how's it different... What do you have to look out for / do here that you didn't on the Sonex.

Another random thought - lately I've considered that project documentation can be as much its own hobby as getting the work done. (Not to mention the other hobby-within-homebuilding - tool collecting...)